‘I was scared, and now I’m mad,’ says woman suing Raleigh Radiology

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – Raleigh Radiology is facing a lawsuit over concerns over image quality of mammograms performed at its Blue Ridge office. The Federal Drug Administration ordered the office to cease performing mammograms.

Gale Taylor said she had three mammograms at that office last year, including two after her doctor found a lump under her arm.

“They would tell me, every time, ‘Everything looks all right for now,'” she said. “And now, I don’t know if any of them are right. I could be sitting here with some fatal disease and I don’t even know about it.”

She first heard on the news that patients had received letters warning them about “a serious concern about the quality of the mammography” performed at Raleigh Radiology’s Blue Ridge office between Nov. 7, 2017 and Nov. 6, 2019.

The letter from Raleigh Radiology said, “the FDA determined that we failed to meet the clinical image quality standards established by our facilities accreditation body, the American College of Radiology, as required by the FDA.”

“Initially, I was scared, and now I’m mad,” Taylor said. “Because how could they go two years — two years — and not know something wasn’t right.”

She’s suing Raleigh Radiology in hopes of getting reimbursed for the three mammograms she now said are useless.

“I don’t know if they are good or they are bad, but I know I don’t trust them,” Taylor said.

Attorney Stuart Paynter is representing Taylor, as well as other women suing Raleigh Radiology.

“We also represent, probably at this point, dozens of women for individual cases who want to bring suit because of the stress and the anxiety that this has put them through,” he explained.

He has also filed a class-action suit that he hopes will get more answers for the women affected.

“They’ve been very vague,” he said of Raleigh Radiology.

Raleigh Radiology posted a video to its website in which a woman, identified as Dr. Laura Thomas, Chair of Breast Imaging, apologizes for any concern caused to patients. She explained that they won’t perform mammograms at their Blue Ridge facility until they have their mammography accreditation reinstated. They are still performing mammograms at their other locations.