But while the medicine might make patients and hospital administrators feel better, it won't actually reduce the time people wait for treatment.

And Panadol is not an acceptable substitute for Panadeine.

An Assembly committee has been told that public hospitals around Australia have vastly different interpretations of the definitions used to help collect hospital data.

The ACT government believed that this could disadvantaging the territory when the data was used to compare the timeliness of care in different jurisdictions.

ACT Health director-general Peggy Brown said emergency department waiting times were recorded by ''stopping the clock'' when treatment commenced. But some hospitals within the same state might have different ideas about when to stop the clock.

''One of the requirements about when you stop the clock is when definitive treatment commences,'' Dr Brown said in evidence to the Assembly Public Accounts Committee last week.

''What constitutes definitive treatment? Is it treatment by a doctor, is it any interventions by a nurse?

''My understanding is that for example that the administration of Panadol which is used to reduce temperature and for pain relief does not constitute definitive treatment. The administration of panadeine in some hospitals is interpreted as representing the treatment of definitive treatment.'''

Dr Brown said the lack of absolute rules meant that hospitals interpreted rules differently without malicious or fraudulent intent.

Chief Minister and Health Minister Katy Gallagher said that Australia's health ministers had repeatedly failed to agree on standard definitions around emergency department and elective surgery waiting time definitions.

''I don't believe there will be a national agreement reached because it's not in any other health system's interest, particularly those whose data is looking very good - it's not in their interest to change the way that they are reporting their data,'' Ms Gallagher said.

''So without getting everyone to agree what is like with like … no one can say each hospital's being measured the same way. For a small jurisdiction with two hospitals under enormous pressure that will always put the ACT on the backfoot.''

The Public Accounts hearing was called to discuss an auditor-general's report into the doctoring of Canberra Hospital emergency department statistics between 2009 and earlier this year.

Canberra Hospital executive Kate Jackson, who took responsibility for hundreds of the changes, resigned from the Health Directorate last week.

The changes were made using generic log-ons to the hospital's Emergency Department Information Service.

Dr Brown said a decision was yet to be made on whether to allocated staff individual log-ons to EDIS when the staff log-ins when the system was upgraded later this year.

''We will investigate that as part of the upgrade but it's not a simple decision to just say implement individual log-ons. Because we could potentially just impact very, very adversely on clinical care that's delivered,'' she said.