PSA National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said Health NZ was proposing to remove 23 roles, a 28 percent reduction of the workforce. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Public Service Association (PSA) is urging the auditor-general to investigate proposed job cuts to crucial anti-fraud roles at Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand.
National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said removing experts in detecting fraud and overpayments would see millions of health dollars lost.
But Health NZ says the reduction is targeted at extra layers of management and duplication, and the new structure would strengthen existing controls.
Fitzsimons said Health NZ was proposing to remove 23 Audit and Assurance Directorate roles, a cut of 28 percent of the workforce, along with other changes.
"Millions of dollars of precious health funds will be lost if this proposal goes ahead so the auditor-general as the watchdog of the public purse should be concerned," she said.
"If these jobs are axed, fewer investigations and audits will take place. It just makes no sense to save money through job cuts when you weigh that against the huge loss of money that will no longer be clawed back if this team is gutted. Any costs savings from job losses will be lost through mistakes and fraud going undetected.
"We have written to the auditor-general asking him to challenge the government's decision which will erode rigourous oversight and good governance over billions of scarce public dollars.
The impacted workers are specialised auditors and fraud investigators, who each recover around $430,000 a year, she said.
"The PSA strongly opposes these cuts which come at a time of huge pressure on the public health system and when the health dollar has never been scarcer because of government decisions to underfund and cut health spending."
Health NZ rejected the criticism of its audit changes.
"We will actually be able to increase from an 11.8 Health Payment Integrity Team (HPIT) audit team to an integrated audit team of 26, and the size of the Data Analytics team and the Risk Management team will be doubled," Health NZ chief of assurance and risk Ramon Manzano said.
The new structure would enable new measures to protect the integrity of health system funding, including strengthening front-end preventive controls to deal with the root causes of fraud, and expanding the use of data analytics and computerised audits to detect fraud in near real-time.
"All of this represents an increase in long-term value because, currently, only a small portion of overclaims is captured, Manzano said in a statement.
"There is clearly more value in preventing these overclaims from happening in the first place."
Auditor-general considering probe
A spokesperson for the Office of the Auditor-General told RNZ it was considering whether to look into the PSA's concerns.
"We can confirm that we have received correspondence asking us to look at investigating this issue.
"In line with our usual process we are considering the issues raised, and whether or not we will carry out any inquiry work (including whether the issues are within our mandate).
"We don't give public updates on progress or the substance of what we are doing while our work is underway."
The Office said it would provide an update when it was in a position to do so.
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