The Southern District Health Board has blamed a ‘‘series of circumstances'' for a senior clinician incurring an $11,000 bill on a digital device while overseas.
To avoid it recurring, the board recently installed an automatic device switch-off when data use exceeds $1000.
Chief executive Carole Heatly said the person was reimbursed for the bill after an investigation found no fault on their behalf.
‘‘They volunteered to repay the bill, which I accepted pending an investigation of the situation.''
Staff were supposed to receive a warning email when they approached $1000 of data usage, but it had not occurred in this instance because of staff absences at the health board and at service provider Spark.
The money could not be recovered from Spark because the service contract did not allow for it.
‘‘A series of circumstances contributed to a senior clinician at the SDHB inadvertently incurring a large bill for data while working overseas last year.
‘‘Unfortunately, due to staff absences both at the SDHB and Spark, this process failed on this occasion. As soon as we became aware of the situation, the data was turned off.
‘‘The investigation clarified that the clinician was not at fault, and was working on SDHB business, and therefore the costs were met by the SDHB.
‘‘Our contract with Spark does not allow compensation for their part in this process failure,'' Ms Heatly said.
Under the old system, a Spark account manager emailed the health board when a device was approaching $1000 of data use.
‘‘As a result of this situation, we reviewed and updated our process, so that any device on the SDHB network exceeding $1000 of data usage is turned off automatically, meaning we are no longer reliant on people to intervene,'' Ms Heatly said in a statement.
