Rachel Stephen-Smith defends handling of release of COVID-19 data

Internal emails in ACT Health, released under freedom of information, revealed that health officials blocked the release of deidentified patient comorbidity data, despite knowing it was "an important part of the picture". Authorities said publicly at the time this was because they did not "routinely collect that data" but emails revealed it was due to unspecified privacy reasons.

Health officials even rejected a request from Ms Stephen-Smith's office to include information around the fact a number of COVID-19 deaths had occurred in palliative care as the directorate could not quantify that information.

But Ms Stephen-Smith told question time that directorate staff had responsiblities under the Health Records Act and could breach those responsibilities if they even said a person who died or was in intensive care with COVID-19 had "underlying health conditions".

She said while the information would not be identifiable to the wider Canberra community, it could be identifiable to those who knew people in intensive care.

"The kind of information around comorbidities, underlying health conditions or indeed vaccination status, is personal health information in the context of the Health Records Act," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

"When you only have a very small number of people in the intensive care unit at any one point in time, providing that information may not identify those people to the broader Canberra community but it will provide people who know [someone] in ICU with information about a person's health status or their vaccination status.

"Their personal health information that they may have not consented to be provided to those people who know they are in the ICU.

"So there are some really serious issues around health privacy here."

The documents, released to The Canberra Times, related to internal correspondence about a media inquiry for information on the vaccination status and comorbidities of all COVID-19 deaths and intensive care admissions in the territory in January 2022.

This information is regularly released in other states.

The emails showed during the worst period for deaths in the pandemic, ACT health officials were concerned about the public misinterpreting data and so kept these and other facts secret.

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Ms Stephen-Smith said she and her office had previously had disagreements around what information should be released but ultimately defended the decisions made by ACT Health officials. The documents revealed that the Health Minister's office wanted information on palliative care deaths provided.

"There have indeed some robust conversations between myself and my office and ACT Health about access to information in response to media inquiries," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

"This is often a conversation about what we can provide with absolute confidence.

"ACT Health officials take their responsibility to provide accurate information to the ACT public very seriously. They also want to know that they can stand behind any information that they provide.

"And they have previously expressed some caution around information that they have been concerned might not be consistent with their obligations under the health records, privacy and access act.

"We have had difference of view about some of that information when it should be provided and we've discussed those things openly."

The ACT's opposition grilled the Health Minister on the report from The Canberra Times on Wednesday afternoon.

Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley accused the government of having a culture of secrecy.

"Canberrans deserve and have a right to know what's going on in the middle of a pandemic. That shouldn't be kept in the dark," Ms Castley said.

Ms Castley said the report showed Ms Stephen-Smith had lost control of the system.

But Ms Stephen-Smith rejected claims the Health Directorate was keeping her in the dark with COVID-19 information.

"Our officials provide both me and the cabinet regularly with epidemiological updates that include a range of information," she said.

"The questions that were pertinent to The Canberra Times freedom of information request related to the information that was going to be provided to a media outlet in response to a media request.

"The question was not whether I was going to be able to have that information."

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