The ACT government has been forced to correct misleading data on the performance of Canberra's public hospitals, prompting the opposition to accuse it of "gross incompetence".
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When contacted by The Canberra Times about the discrepancies, health minister Simon Corbell said the errors were unintentional and government reports would be corrected and reissued with a public notification later this week.
"I am very disappointed this has occurred and I have made this clear to my directorate who have put a number of new processes in place," he said. "These are clearly human and isolated errors."
But opposition leader Jeremy Hanson refused to rule out the intentional manipulation of data to mislead the public on a politically sensitive issue.
"Given their track record, I no longer trust this government when it comes to claims about emergency department data or their assurances that this was not deliberate data manipulation," he said.
Median wait times at emergency departments during July-December 2013 have been repeatedly changed by ACT Health in recent years.
On first mention, the wait time was reported as 34 minutes but this changed to 39 minutes and 36 minutes in subsequent years amid record presentations.
The breakdown for urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent presentations also changed in 2015 with no explanation provided in government reports or media statements.
"In both instances, the incorrectly reported data highlighted worse performances so any suggestion the data has been manipulated is simply wrong," Mr Corbell said.
But Mr Hanson said the changes allowed the government to claim wait times had remained relatively stable, rather than increasing by 8 per cent.
"It is the very fact that the old data was made to look worse that is the problem," he said.
In early 2015, Mr Corbell said wait times had "remained steady during the past six months" compared to the same period a year earlier. This statement appears to be based on data that will now be corrected.
Mr Hanson has sought to link the errors to the data doctoring scandal of 2009-2011, when a senior hospital executive admitted to tampering with more than 11,000 emergency department patient records to improve performance.
The scandal placed former chief minister and health minister Katy Gallagher under political pressure including a motion of no confidence, which she dismissed as a political stunt.
"Given that emergency department data has previously been fabricated by health staff to present a false impression of improving results, intentional manipulation to again deliberately mislead the community cannot be discounted," Mr Hanson said.
Mr Corbell dismissed any attempt to link the errors with the doctoring scandal as "mischievous" and "simply politics".
"To suggest this is clearly clutching at straws," he said. "What occurred then was falsification at the data entry point. What has occurred here is a processing error in two isolated instances."
Mr Corbell said ACT Health would ensure three people checked and verified data before future public release. It is not known whether the public servants involved have been disciplined, with any decision left to the directorate.
The correction comes a month after ACT Auditor-General Maxine Cooper revealed Calvary's chief executive and chief financial officer resigned in 2014 over incorrect financial reports and false minutes.
In 2013-14, $8.89 million was falsely reported as having been received from the ACT government, allowing the hospital to report an operating surplus of $1.9 million, when the real position was a $9.5 million loss.
Mr Corbell has since expressed confidence in the hospitals new management team and insisted no taxpayer money was misused or lost, with those involved in ordeal no longer working for Calvary hospital.
Improving emergency department performance is a difficult task with presentations increasing by 22 percent since 2009-10, despite the territory's population increasing by 9 percent.
Emergency departments at Calvary and Canberra Hospitals are busier than ever with nearly 130,000 patients treated last financial year.
"I am very encouraged by our work to date, but clearly more needs to be done."
