Beaumont Hospital in Dublin billed the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) €25,000 for treatment of patients whose bills had already been covered by the HSE, internal auditors have found.
The payment relates to patients treated by the rheumatology department at Beaumont.
The NTPF announced in June that, on foot of “potential financial irregularities”, it had suspended funding to Beaumont Hospital for what is known as “insourcing”, an initiative aimed at tackling waiting lists.
Insourcing involves the treatment of patients at public facilities outside core working hours or at weekends. Hospitals receive additional payments from the NTPF for carrying out special insourcing waiting-list clinics.
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In June consultants at Beaumont maintained the hospital had billed the NTPF for patients who were treated as part of the regular working day.
Beaumont Hospital has said it has repaid the €25,000 to the NTPF.
The NTPF, which receives more than €200 million in State funding to buy care in the public and private sector for patients on waiting lists, said it alerted the Department of Health and the HSE about an issue at a hospital in April. HSE internal auditors were asked to examine the issue at Beaumont.
The Irish Times reported at the time that the catalyst for the NTPF move to pause funding was a letter written by consultants in one part of Beaumont – later identified in the Oireachtas as the rheumatology department – raising concerns that it had billed the NTPF for about 1,400 patients seen in routine public clinics.
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Neither Beaumont nor the NTPF have answered any substantive questions on the issue of the payments in respect of the rheumatology patients over recent months.
The internal audit report on the rheumatology billing is complete. The NTPF did not say whether the pause on insourcing funding to Beaumont remained in place.
Authorities at Beaumont and the NTPF are scheduled to appear before the Dáil Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
In a submission to the Public Accounts Committee, Beaumont Hospital chief executive Anne Coyle said the HSE internal auditors found the hospital billed the NTPF €25,000 in error for rheumatology waiting-list services that had already been funded by the HSE.
“This amount has been reimbursed to the NTPF,” she said.
Ms Coyle said: “At all times, the hospital’s overriding focus was actively managing waiting lists for rheumatology during the review period to ensure waiting times were reduced and maintained.”
Beaumont said no consultant at the hospital received any additional income or reimbursement for these treatment clinics billed to the NTPF.
It is understood auditors may now look at other specialties at Beaumont to determine if similar errors have occurred.
