A 20-year-old health program targeting polypharmacy and undertreatment in veterans has ended after allegations it shared the health data of 300,000 patients with a university without proper consent.

Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Matt Keogh said on Monday he was stopping the Veterans’ Medicines Advice and Therapeutic Education Services (MATES) program due to concerns from patients about its opt-out consent process.

Since 2004, Veterans’ MATES had used administrative data such as PBS records to identify patients who might benefit from medications reviews, sending out 1.5 million alerts to doctors about 300,000 patients.

The program was run in partnership with the University of SA.