Queensland Health Seeks To Recoup Millions From Private Public Program Doctor pay scheme a 'scandal' A Queensland Health scheme where private doctors were paid $231 million in allowances in one year to treat public patients has drawn comparisons to "the infamous health payroll bungle." The committee, which oversaw a Queensland Health scheme encouraging private practice in public hospitals, will be disbanded as the government seeks to recover some of the $800 million for the "cost neutral" program. But health minister Lawrence Springborg said the government only expected to recover between $40 and $50 million as the review of the scheme would only go back two years. Mr Springborg accused the former government of a "cover up" and singled out Together Union boss Alex Scott, as a member of the Private Practice Management Committee which allowed the scheme to "go off the rails." Mr Springborg presented a 2008 draft financial assessment of the arrangement, which was completed by audit firm KPMG and sent to Mr Scott. In the draft report, the cost of the 2006 expansion of the scheme was estimated to potentially cost the 2007-08 health budget $115 million. Mr Springborg said the report was proof the committee and Mr Scott knew the system was failing. Mr Scott has been contacted for comment. To recover funds, departmental staff will attempt to "reconstruct" various cases where private patients were treated in public hospitals and recover fees which were not properly charged - from Medicare, private health funds, and in some cases, depending on the facilities used, doctors who were paid under the scheme. In essence, it will be a matter of receiving the funds which public facilities should have been billing for, but not putting in the claim forms. Given the amount of work each recovery case will need, Mr Springborg said it had to be limited to just the past 24 months. "I don't necessarily blame the majority of the individual clinicians who received this allowance because the majority of them wouldn't even have known what this is about," Mr Springborg said. It has basically become a de facto pay top up, which was given in around 2006 and indeed, it should have been the administrators and those who were responsible for oversight in this who should have enforced the retention and collection of those funds. The scheme has been described as "chaotic and vulnerable to misinterpretation" by the Australian Medical Association. The second half of the auditor-general's review of the scheme is due later this year.