Underfunded frontline health services will be further
impacted
The ability of Health NZ to claw back
millions of scarce health dollars lost to fraud and
overpayment each year will be undermined by proposed cuts to
the jobs of audit and fraud experts.
The
Audit Assurance and Risk team is a critical Health NZ Te
Whatu Ora unit focused on ensuring some $12 billion of
annual funding of the primary health care sector is paid out
correctly and not subject to fraud.
But
Health NZ is proposing to remove 23 roles, a cut of 28% of
the workforce, at a time when the health dollar has never
been scarcer.
“We see every day how underfunded the
health system is so cutting the very team that claws back
overpayments and tackles fraud makes no sense,” said Fleur
Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service
Association for Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.
“By not
detecting overpayments or cracking down on fraud, it means
precious health dollars are not being used for their proper
purpose of improving outcomes for patients no matter where
they are in the health system.
“The system will just
be ripe to be exploited by more fraudsters and the loser
will be all users of the health system from patients to
clinicians.
“This is just more evidence of how poorly
thought through many of the spending cuts we have seen
throughout the public sector have been.
“The
Government has imposed a health funding crisis in this
country and should be doing all it can to make the health
dollar go further, including properly funding the health
system in the first place.
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“These workers are highly
specialised auditors and fraud investigators who save the
Government millions of dollars each year – it’s simply
penny wise and pound foolish to scrap these
roles.
“Each year they carry out audits and fraud
investigations of those receiving health funding like
medical clinics, midwives, pharmacies and disability support
providers to ensure the money is being used correctly for
the specified purposes.
“The amount saved in salary
cuts pales beside the loss of money not being clawed back
with a minimum of 80 providers or fraudulent actors not
being held to account each year. These experts are good at
what they do, recovering $6 for every $1 invested in the
team. One audit recently recovered $6 million from a
provider which was overpaid.
“But they face a big
challenge. The team estimates that Health NZ is currently
losing at least 3% of the $12 billion of annual provider
funding due to civil and criminal fraud and error – that’s
a huge loss of $360 million annually.
“Part of the
problem is that the payment systems at Health NZ are
antiquated, but you don’t fix that by axing the very
people who are doing their best to save scarce health
dollars.
“The PSA calls for these proposed cuts to be
reversed.”
PSA
submission to Te Whatu Ora Audit & Assurance
Consultation
Document
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