I am a bit confused about this whole story. Is it claimed hospitals were exaggerating their waiting lists in order to increase funding, or that they were understating them in order to look good? Like many news stories on this subject, this one from the Herald Sun is unclear about what actually happened, or is alleged to have happened.

This story from the Australian makes things a bit clearer. It claims that in the case of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, staff falsely reduced the number of patients on waiting lists so that the hospital appeared to be meeting government targets for waiting times for elective surgery. Meeting those targets meant that the hospital received bonus funding to which it was not entitled. This means that the hospital was cheating other health care providers by taking more than its share of the health budget.

Hospital CEO Dale Fisher says that staff involved will be disciplined. But staff who admitted to auditors that they knew what was happening also said that they believed senior staff were aware of the practice, and that it was condoned.

I doubt very much that this kind of practice is unique to health services in Victoria. I know that at least some educational institutions in Queensland and South Australia, including child care centres and state schools, routinely overstate their enrolments in order to increase their funding. Again, this cheats honest schools and providers because it means less funding is left for them.

I thought proper auditing was a requirement for any government funding. How have these major government institutions been able to get away with cheating the public for so long?