Real-time data from ACT's walk-in centres was misrepresented on the Digital Health Record for 20 months before health officials fixed the problem.
If patients presented to a centre and they could not be treated, information about whether they were referred to the hospital emergency department or a GP was unreliable between November 2022 and June 2024.
"It was identified that operational data was input in an inconsistent way," an ACT government spokesman said.
For example, recommended follow-up GP visits (after treatment) were also input as a GP redirection.
But this had been "resolved" and redirections were being captured accurately in the Digital Health Record, the spokesman said.
He provided an average number of presentations per day across ACT's five walk-in centres and the average number of redirections per day.
During 33 days this year - from August 8 to September 19 - the average number of presentations per day were 363 while average redirections per day were 23.
On average patients were redirected from walk-in centres to another service provider, including the emergency department, 15.7 per cent of the time.
"Please note that this is operational data," the spokesman said.
Reports paused indefinitely
Data recording issues have led to a backlog of public reporting as performance reports for walk-in centres have been unavailable since late 2022.
Previously, a Canberra GP said two of her patients had poor experiences at walk-in centres where one of them was hospitalised.
She was among two peak bodies, and a political party calling for an independent review of the centres for various reasons including unavailable health data.
The Canberra Times asked the health directorate when it would start publicly reporting performance, and when reports dating back to 2022 would be shared.
A government spokesman said a "remediation" project was in progress at ACT Health and as a result walk-in centre performance reports were indefinitely on pause.
"ACT Health is working on surfacing walk-in centre performance data as part of the broader data remediation project currently under way. At present we do not have a timeline for when the redirects will be available for public reporting," he said.
Another spokesman said ACT Health and Canberra Heath Services did not have procedures in place yet which allowed public reporting.
"ACT Health and Canberra Health Services are currently working on establishing agreed methodologies and standards," he said.
He said ACT Health was working on methods and resourcing of staff to make sure walk-in centre data from the Digital Health Record (including redirections) could be analysed.
He said data would be reported accurately from a data reporting platform.
"The ACT Government aligns its data publication with established national standards," the spokesman said.
Internal reviews
The government has previously defended walk-in centres against calls for an independent review saying the centres were subject to regular internal reviews.
The spokesman said treatment protocols and medication standing orders at the centres were internally evaluated, but did not share any reports because publicly reporting data required a "high level" of validation.
"Data for public reporting requires a high level of quality assurance and data development work to ensure it aligns with established data standards and definitions. This allows for meaningful comparisons across time and ensures accuracy and transparency of performance data," he said.
He said internal reviews were done to ensure services were "complying with evidence-based practice" and when the government was considering expanding services or clinical treatments.
