HEALTH bosses brought in a new payroll system for hospital workers without knowing whether it worked, an investigation has revealed.

A damning report found a catalogue of errors with the system. Mistakes were made in pay packets of about 800 staff. Many of the problems have yet to be fixed.

Auditors make 37 recommendations in the internal document, which has been leaked to the Daily Echo.

Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, was one of the first NHS centres in the UK to test-drive the system, which came online on April 1 last year.

Three months later pay problems had got so bad that 200 staff walked out. By November union chiefs estimated that about 800 employees had received incorrect pay packets ranging from no money at all, to missed overtime payments.

The inquiry reveals:

l The payroll system was put into play without clear knowledge of its level of accuracy.

l The decision to "go live" with the system was not ratified by the trust's chief executive, as required.

l The system was not properly overseen, resulting in a significant number of inaccuracies over staff pay being made and not identified.

The report adds that a large amount of work still needs to be done by the trust to eliminate all the problems in the system and to ensure that employees get their wages paid accurately and on time.

It also says that management at the trust failed to keep on top of the project, and that despite those involved with the scheme raising serious concerns over the system's readiness to do the job, the decision to press on was still taken.

Doug Smith, chairman of the joint trade unions at the RHCH, said: "We are fuming. We have been used as guinea pigs for a system that was faulty, using us to rectify those faults. Managers were given clear warnings but they were disregarded."

Mr Smith called for an independent inquiry. An estimated 300 employees are still having problems with their pay he claimed. He said: "We need to find out who was responsible for making the decision to launch and causing our members a great deal of distress and concern."

Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust's chief executive Chris Evennett said: "Introducing any new computer system is not without risk. These concerns were acknowledged by the project group but on balance it was decided to proceed in order to obtain the benefits of the ESR (electronic staff record).

"These benefits include replacing paper methods of tracking leave, training and professional registration among other things. Better monitoring is good for efficiency and good for patient safety.

"With the benefit of hindsight it was just too much change at the same time. We have learned a great deal and there continue to be improvements in payroll with fewer new queries.

"Some aspects of good project discipline were not followed and the trust commissioned its own report to learn the lessons of this and remedy the situation. The trust has now commissioned a second review to monitor progress against these recommendations, many of which have already been implemented."