DOZENS of doctors, nurses, hospital secretaries and support staff workers have received overpayments of their salaries amounting to more than £240,000 in the past year.
A specialist registrar was paid £122,150 too much while a hospital consultant was overpaid by £27,360 after mistakes were made during the input of their salaries onto computer systems.
Another 38 members of staff at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust received too much in wages after managers failed to notify payroll staff of changes in their working conditions. Some were still being paid after leaving the trust, which runs Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham.
Now, an investigation has been launched and staff caught up in the overpayments have been asked to repay the cash to the trust, which is facing some of the tightest financial constraints on NHS budgets since the organisation was founded in 1948.
A trust spokesman said they issue about 96,000 pay slips a year.
He said: "A recent review was conducted to provide assurance around the process for controlling salary payments.
"Audits such as this one are a regular and important way of monitoring the effectiveness of our financial systems and processes.
"We have recovered the vast majority of the funds released in error and where it hasn't yet proved possible, steps are been taken to do so."
The salary overpayments between April last year and June this year came to light after payroll staff reported the overpayments to the trust's audit committee.
A report to the committee states: "In total, there have been 40 overpayments logged on the register during this period.
"This is uncharacteristically high and includes two large overpayments totalling £150k that were caused by input errors."
While the committee meets in private, the report was mentioned in papers sent to trust board and has been released to the Mail under the Freedom of Information Act.
One nurse was paid £4,159 extra after her maternity leave paperwork was not received from the trust's human resources department while a midwife was paid £1,688 despite reducing her working hours.
Other staff continued to be paid, despite leaving the trust, when managers failed to inform the appropriate departments to stop their wages.
One former employee was paid £8,213.50, despite quitting their job, but sent the money back when the mistake came to light.
The report states: "The most common reason for overpayment is failure by managers to notify the payroll team that staff have left, changed grade or reduced their hours.
"An investigation was undertaken in order to identify any systems weaknesses and prevent a recurrence.
"In addition, Internal Audit has been asked to provide further assurance over the quality of payroll checking and review processes."
While some staff are repaying their salaries over two to nine- month repayment schemes, debt collection arrangements have been made to recover the money from some staff who have quit their jobs.
The consultant given the additional £27,360.62 has agreed to repay the amount in full by cheque while the specialist registrar awarded £122,150 has returned the amount via bank transfer.
