THE ACT Auditor-General Dr Maxine Cooper has presented a report on the Integrity of Data in the Health Directorate.

“The audit found that the integrity of Activity Based Funding data reported by the ACT Health Directorate to the Australian Government for Admitted Patient and Emergency Department services is adequate,” Maxine said.

“However, non-admitted Patient data integrity is inadequate.

“The Health Directorate estimates that for the last six months errors in non-admitted patient data, detected by the Audit Office, could have resulted in ‘around $2 million to $3 million’ being underclaimed.

The report found that considerable effort by ACT Health over the past two years has led to improvements in areas such as governance, data management, training and user access, resulting in improved data integrity.

“However, there is more work to be done. It is important for ACT Health to develop and implement standard policies, procedures, systems and training to assist hospital personnel, especially in the non-admitted patient areas”

UPDATE: The Liberals have expressed their displeasure at these findings:

The Auditor-General has revealed data integrity in the ACT Health Directorate is inadequate meaning potential losses of up to $3 million in federal funding.

This is damning given the data doctoring scandal which embroiled the government in 2012, Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Hanson said today.

“Three years after data doctoring scandal of 2012, ACT Health is still plagued by data integrity issues which demonstrate the government has little interest in fixing the deep running issues inside the Directorate. This ineptitude has cost Canberra taxpayers millions of dollars,” Mr Hanson said.

“The Barr government has not learnt from the data integrity issues of the past including the data doctoring scandal of 2012. If they had, they would have fixed any issues. The Barr government is not up to running Canberra’s health system,” Mr Hanson concluded.