Page 1503 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
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The second thing that this Bill does is cover the release of confidential information. According to the Minister, the need for the release of confidential information on the provision of health services by a health service provider at a health facility arises from recommendations of the Auditor-General in report No. 5 of August 1993. The Minister said that it was necessary to release confidential information to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. I think he might be jumping the gun just a little, particularly in those statements. What he did not say, and should have said, was that strictly limited information was being sought by the Health Insurance Commission covering only a specific time period, to seek to establish whether or not any fraud may have occurred.
In his presentation speech the Minister referred to a working party of the Health Minister's Advisory Council which was looking at the question of combating fraud in payments for medical and health services. The working party, which has not yet reported, was formed to look at the problem raised by the Victorian Auditor-General. That problem was that the Victorian Auditor-General could not state categorically that there was no double dipping because he could not match data and therefore could not verify any or all transactions. So the Health Ministers formed the working party to investigate whether any double dipping might have occurred throughout Australia over a certain specified period. To do this job they needed to have some data.
In some cases, that is in New South Wales and South Australia, the data has been made available. In other cases, such as Victoria, Queensland and, presumably, the ACT, releasing the relevant data requires an amendment to legislation. The purpose of this Bill from the point of view of the working party is only to make available data for a limited period of time in order to conduct research to establish whether double dipping has occurred. It is not, as the Minister represented it, to make data available on a general and continuing basis to combat fraud. It might come to that, but it is not the purpose at this stage. The working party has not reported yet. It is still doing its research and that is why it wants the information. It is not even established whether any fraud has occurred. The evidence has not come out yet. There is no question that the public, the AMA and professional health deliverers all support properly conducted research into fraud. Equally, we support measures which will assist in the prevention of fraud and protection against fraud; but let us see the evidence first. For this reason we support the release of confidential information to those conducting research into fraud, and in this case it is the Health Insurance Commission.
From bitter experience, health care deliverers might be very concerned and suspicious that confidential information may be used for purposes other than the prevention and detection of fraud. What guarantee is there that confidential information will not be used for political purposes? We had the example only a few months ago when the previous Minister used information against VMOs which could have been sourced only from confidential records. The Bill, as drafted, would not prevent this from happening again. Of course, I am very confident that Mr Connolly would never do anything like that; but there is nothing in the Act which restricts to whom information may be sent and, of course, where it would finish up. The Privacy Act does not help.
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