Queensland Health staff can dispute overpayments

Queensland Health's troubled payroll system will need an extra $10 million on top of the $209 million it's already cost to fix.

Queensland Health's (QH) acting director general, Tony O'Connell, admitted the extra cost during questioning by a parliamentary estimates committee on Wednesday.

He told MPs $209 million had funded measures to improve the system like extra payroll staff since its disastrous launch in March 2010.

But more money was needed for more staff and staff support.

"We're currently discussing with Treasury exactly how much that is but it's of the order of $10 million," O'Connell said.

Opposition health spokesman, Mark McArdle, said a parliamentary inquiry was needed into the continuing fiasco.

Meanwhile, Health Minister, Geoff Wilson, was questioned over attempts to reclaim $62 million in wage overpayments from 38,000 workers, over which a moratorium is now in place.

The highest overpayment was almost $100,000, while most were mistakenly paid an average of between $1100 and $1500.

The committee questioned the minister on how staff could be confident of the amounts being asked of them when the system had so monumentally failed when it was introduced in March last year.

Independent MP Liz Cunningham said payslips she had seen were unintelligible.

"It appears to me... they're being required to provide a reverse onus of proof," Cunningham said.

"... But the detail on which they must base that proof are flawed payslips that Queensland Health themselves provided."

She said it was surely the responsibility of QH to prove staff had been overpaid, not for workers to prove they had not been.

Wilson said the amounts, which were "the best information we had", were checked twice.

"Indeed publicly, I called upon the staff to dispute the information should they wish to, and to ask questions."

The letters were "a step that enabled them (staff) to say, I don't agree, I dispute it, and even if I don't have any information to dispute it with, I don't accept it".

The obligation was on QH to establish overpayments and if they could not, "then that's Queensland Health's problem", he said.

O'Connell said the letters had contained figures "as accurate as we believed our system could generate" and case managers were available to help staff.

Asked what would happen if the money was not recouped, he said it would be lost to the health budget.

But he said the majority of staff were well meaning and intended to pay back money, many already having paid back millions.

About 22,000 overpaid by up to $200 will have their debts wiped at a cost of $1.6 million.

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