Responses to questions taken on notice during Estimates Hearings last week by the Health Minister have confirmed that ACT Health may have wrongly paid a number of invoices to NTT a company linked to the Digital Health Record.

300 invoices have been paid to NTT totalling more than $110 million.

Shadow Minister for Health Leanne Castley asked a number of questions of the Minister and officials regarding the contracts with NTT and at what point ACT Health and the Minister became aware there might have been an issue with NTT’s invoices and services.

Ms Castley said an internal audit clearly shows instances where the directorate was billed for services inconsistent with the terms of the contract.

The audit found that, “ACT Health Directorate is unable to provide assurance that the services for which they were invoiced (or for which accruals were made) relating to NTT invoicing for the period of 1 June 2023 to 30 June 2023 were appropriate for payment as the invoices from NTT were not adequately structured to permit acquittal of the invoices in sufficient detail".

“This is extraordinary and very concerning that staff within the ACT Health Directorate are unable to confirm what was being paid,” Ms Castley said.

“The fact that the Minister claims she was kept in the dark despite this issue being referenced in a report relating to funding pressures highlights a health system that is in disarray because of a lack of leadership from Minister Stephen-Smith.

“The Minister is clearly now in damage control, highlighted by the fact that the responses to questions taken on notice regarding the audit were given to the media before being returned to the Canberra Liberals and made public.

“The Minister must provide details specifically about what steps are being taken to rectify this situation? Outline specifically what steps are being taken to recover any waste of Canberrans money? whether payments are continuing to be made following this audit report? and why, the Health Minister was unaware of this issue given she was briefed on DHR project costs and the burn rate of the project?

“I think Canberrans are right to ask what other serious issues the Health Minister might have overlooked and what the Directorate might be keeping from her?

“This issue confirms that there is a lack of Ministerial oversight on how Canberrans money is being spent.

“This shocking admission by the Minister adds to the growing list of hundreds of millions of Canberrans dollars that the Labor-Greens government has wasted with no accountability.”

Ms Castley also highlighted two other internal spot checks of invoices that were undertaken by the ACTHD Strategic Finance team relating to travel and work hour invoices submitted by Epic and credit card expenditure and sign off in the Digital Solutions Division.

“The Minister must be upfront about these additional audits and make these reports public as well so Canberrans can understand if there are more adverse findings that have been made in relation to the DHR system,” Ms Castley concluded.