Canberra Health Services privacy breach being investigated by police

Minister for Mental Health Emma Davidson has only said the staff involved no longer have access to confidential information and she declined to answer questions about the breach due to the ongoing investigation.

It has been revealed the breach occurred from people working within mental health at Canberra Health Services.

The breaches occurred over a period of years and whole clinical records were sent to an "industrial partner". There were 13 patients affected by the breach.

However, Ms Davidson did not provide further detail about who the industrial partner was or why staff had committed the serious breach. It is also unclear whether the staff are still employed by Canberra Health Services.

She did not provide direct answers to a number of questions during question time in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday afternoon or at a press conference earlier in the day, citing the police investigation.

"CHS really understands its legislative and values-based obligations in relation to patient privacy and confidentiality and they treat any breach of this very seriously," she said.

"Following the distressing news of the privacy breaches, I've been assured by CHS that any staff involved have no further access to confidential information."

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Ms Davidson said she would provide further information once the police investigation has been completed. She said policies and procedures were being followed in relation to the matter.

"There are policies and procedures both around how we deal with the access to and storage of information and what happens when a breach occurs," she said.

"When a breach occurs, it is very important that we go through the proper processes to fully understand the extent of the breach and the nature of it."

The breach came to light after an email sent by Canberra Health Services chief executive Dave Peffer was leaked. The email was sent to all staff in the organisation more than two weeks ago.

Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley questioned why the minister had not informed the public of the serious breach sooner.

"I believe the moment the minister found out about this she needed to give Canberra an update and explain what has happened," she said.

"I'm surprised it has taken this long for us to find out about this."

Ms Davidson said health authorities wanted to make sure affected patients had been looked after before the matter became public. This is despite the fact more than 8000 staff were told of the breach two weeks ago.

"There are procedures to be followed when a breach of this nature occurs and those include ensuring there is patient disclosure about what's happened and what this means for them and making sure we're looking after people who are in a vulnerable state," she said.

"I have been assured by CHS that they are doing all of the right things to make sure that patients are being looked after in this situation and it is important these things happen before this is talked about in the media as has how happened."

Ms Castley said while she understood there was a police investigation she believed the Minister could provide some information around the breaches.

"It's not OK that the Minister has come out again with this culture of secrecy, unwilling to explain what has gone on," she said.

Mr Peffer's email, from March 6, said patient records had been "deliberately emailed" to people outside the organisation.

"In recent weeks we've discovered a serious breach in the privacy of patient health records within one of our teams, extending back some time," the email said.

"Records have been sent by a small number of team members to multiple team members to multiple people within one of our industrial partners.

"Records that should never have been shared outside the organisation, without the express consent of our patients."

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