Health payroll bungle still haunts workers

QUEENSLAND Health is still chasing almost $60 million in overpayments to about 42,000 current and former staff eight years on from the billion-dollar health payroll disaster.

Queensland Minister for Health and Ambulance Services Steven Miles has defended the processes involved in recouping money lost in the Health payroll bungle.

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QUEENSLAND Health is chasing almost $60 million in overpayments to about 42,000 current and former staff eight years on from the billion-dollar health payroll disaster.

One former Queensland Health worker is being pursued for a mere $400, including a 5¢ overpayment, dating from between 2010 and 2014. She has only just been told of the error.

This is despite the former Caloundra Hospital nurse, who has not worked for Queensland Health for at least three years, already having repaid overpayments totalling $2746 in 2013.

An email from Queensland Health says the extra $400 was identified after the 2013 payment.

It includes a 5¢ laundry allowance overpayment from 2010, a $78 leave overpayment from 2013 a $451 recreational leave overpayment. A series of underpayments were also identified.

Former premier Campbell Newman in 2012 announcing a Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Health's payroll disaster. Picture: Liam Kidston

The nurse, who asked not to be identified, believed all pay errors had been settled in 2013.

Speaking to The Sunday Mail, her husband, who is helping her try to reconcile the payments, said one letter threatened to “escalate efforts to recover those funds if needed.”

“She was absolutely appalled that they would use such threatening language,” he said.

“We went through all this rigmarole back in 2013. She is really upset.”

Queensland Health refused to comment on the case due to privacy issues, but said “the vast majority of overpayments are fully repaid within three months of being identified.”

Queensland Health payroll staff protest over their pay and conditions at Chermside in 2011.

“Referring cases for external debt recovery is a last resort that occurs only after reasonable warning has been given to the former employee if they refuse to engage or pay, default on repayment agreements, or attempt to delay the recovery process,” a spokesman said.

It had recovered $66 million in overpayments since 2015 and is currently owed $58.7 million.

Other nurses have spoken out in the past year about being hounded over eight-year-old overpayments caused by payroll errors, in some cases without any supporting evidence.

An independent review in 2013 found the payroll system, which went live in 2010, was a “catastrophic failure” that would cost about $1.2 billion over eight years.

State Opposition leader Deb Frecklington said it was “staggering” the problems prevailed.

“I feel for the thousands of current and former nurses who are still living through this nightmare,” she said.

“It’s staggering to think that Labor’s health payroll debacle is still impacting people almost ten years later.”

Health Minister Steven Miles defended the action. “I’m advised the department works with both current and former staff to recover overpayments as sympathetically and fairly as possible and on a case-by-case basis to ensure due consideration of individual circumstances.”