It was another late-Friday Eastern Health announcement, but this one was well worth hearing. Eastern Health reached a settlement with patients suing the agency over errors in breast cancer testing.

The settlement, worth $17.5 million, was reached after three days of mediation talks, and, if nothing else, has managed to short-circuit what otherwise looked like a lengthy court process. The question of liability was not in doubt, nor was the fact that there would be a settlement. The Cameron Inquiry clearly spelled out how the errors happened, and even Premier Danny Williams had said publicly that liability wasn't on the table and that the heath care corporation should work towards a settlement.

The only issue was the size of the settlement itself.

Problem is, as is often the case in liability matters, the actual settlement presented its own hurdles, especially after the mediation was delayed to try and let the provincial government have a seat at the table. One reason the province was asked to attend was because Eastern Health's insurance topped out at $10 million. The province refused to take part - and, even though it has in other cases, wouldn't agree to putting up money for victims in advance of a formal settlement.

It was beginning to look like seriously ill patients were going to see time frittered away on endless, fruitless discussions, followed by the possibility of a drawn-out case in court. Thankfully, it hasn't come to that, with Eastern Health committing to a further $7.5 million payment out of its own funding.

Money, of course, will never come close to making up for the losses scores of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have suffered as a result of breast cancer testing errors. People have died who might have survived, and families have lost precious time with loved ones.

Still, a timely settlement will help many in a difficult time, and hopefully, the money from the settlement will flow quickly enough to ease those burdens in the near future. The lawyer for the class-action lawsuit, Ches Crosbie, said he hopes the process is expedited. Sometimes, he told The Telegram, it can take as long as a year for all the details to be finalized. We'd submit that, in this case, any further delay would add insult to injury.

One other critical offshoot of the settlement: a commitment from Eastern Health for an independent expert to do a review in 2012 of how well the agency is doing in living up to the recommendations of the Cameron Inquiry.

Victims of breast cancer testing have said all along that money is only a piece of the puzzle, and that their main concern is ensuring that such testing errors never happen again. An independent review is one way to help guarantee that.

All in all, a late Friday afternoon release that few could find problems with.

Let's hope the rest of the settlement process moves as quickly: for many of the victims, time is of the essence.

And a footnote: Monday's Cheers and Jeers referred to City of St. John's traffic officers ticketing cars at an immunization clinic - while four cars were ticketed, the city says it recognized the seriousness of the situation, quickly stopped the ticketing and used its officials to safely direct traffic at the scene instead. Our apologies: even Jeers sometimes get caught up in a pandemic.