‘Lack of control’ over DHB funds

Thousands of dollars paid to Hawke’s Bay District Health Board over several years has gone missing or is unaccounted for, documents released to The Dominion Post reveal.

The money was paid to the health board by people staying in the Ma¯ ori Health Mihiroa Whare, who had friends or family being treated at Hawke’s Bay Hospital.

Last month, The Dominion Post revealed the board’s executive director of strategy and health improvement, Tracee Te Huia, resigned, after an investigation late last year revealed that funds had been misappropriated.

Two independent audit reports released under the Official Information Act reveal it is unlikely the board will ever know the exact amount that went missing, where the missing funds went, or which staff members were responsible.

People staying at the whare often paid cash. Because of poor or non-existent record keeping, it is impossible to know how much cash was received.

Deposits were made, sporadically, into a bank account in Te Huia’s name. Money was withdrawn from this account with little or no record keeping, often as cash from automatic teller machines.

There were 77 withdrawals from ATMs totalling $8230 over a two-year period covered by the audit, with no clear record of how or why the money was spent.

The audit covered the period between late 2015 and late 2017, despite the bank account having been opened by previous staff some 15 years earlier. Further investigations by the health board are ongoing.

Auditors found it difficult to reconcile funds paid for accommodation and for laundry services, which used coin-operated machines.

They had to estimate the amount of missing cash by assessing the amount collected after new staff, who kept proper records, were employed at the whare.

There were large periods when no money was deposited into the bank account.

The new staff began working in April 2017 and from that point, an average of $470 a month was deposited.

The audit found record keeping that suggested funds had been received from people staying at the whare, but it had not been deposited into the account.

‘‘Concerns exist over where and how these funds have been used. It is not clear who has accessed and used the funds that have not been deposited,’’ the report said.

The audits were undertaken after the health board was alerted to concerns made to it in a protected disclosure in September last year.

When Te Huia was interviewed by the investigator in November – excerpts of which were contained in the documents – she acknowledged the existence of the bank account and that it breached health board policy.

The account was managed by staff at a lower level but Te Huia acknowledged it had been mismanaged by her failure to oversee it, according to the documents.

Yesterday, Te Huia said there were a number of inaccuracies in the audit reports, some of which had been replicated in the later report despite her correcting several of the inaccuracies during her interview.

‘‘As I stated in my earlier statement to you, there were issues of poor management practice regarding the whare account.

‘‘As a senior manager, I took responsibility for these poor management practices and that is why I resigned,’’ she said.

‘‘Because I resigned at an early stage in the process, I have not been able to respond to a number of the allegations and statements attributed to me.’’

Te Huia said that none of the allegations were based on fraudulent use of, or misappropriation of, public funds for her own personal gain.