An NHS board will not claw back a £90,000 salary overpayment that was mistakenly given to a member of staff over eight years.
NHS Lothian said the sum – equivalent to five nurses’ salaries – was paid because of an “arithmetic calculation error”.
But it has decided not to try to recover the money after legal experts warned it could take 50 years.
But Miles Briggs, Tory health spokesman, said this “avoidable error” is a “total waste of taxpayers’ money”, adding: “This is particularly frustrating when the NHS is so starved of money and staff. All NHS boards must ensure mistakes like this do not reoccur.”
NHS Lothian has an annual budget of more than £1billion, employs 26,000 staff and provides services to 800,000 people.
The body has struggled to hit waiting times targets and has paid the private sector for spare capacity.
Between April and June last year, NHS Lothian missed outpatient targets on nearly 15,000 occasions.
Further questions have been raised about the board after the sizeable sum of money was paid to the worker in error.
A February the body alluded to the mistake and the obligation of recovering the money but few details were provided.
But the next meeting of the same committee revealed the gross amount was £87,858, which came to £57,000 after tax.
NHS Lothian said: “This error occurred a number of years ago and robust systems have since been put in place to prevent a similar situation.”
