Privacy advocates are calling for police access to patients’ PBS and MBS claims to be subject to court orders, rather than being decided in secret by government officials.

Last year, it emerged that the Department of Human Services had granted 2600 requests from law-enforcement agencies over a 12-month period for MBS and PBS data of individual patients.

None of the requests were assessed by the courts and none of the patients were told the information had been released to the police.

Department officials, in determining whether to grant police access, are using a set of internal guidelines originally drawn up in 2003.