Health Minister Nelson Bascome has expressed disappointment about the backlog in financial statements for health funds.

Extra resources are now being brought in to clear a backlog going back several years.

On Friday he tabled the Mutual Reinsurance Fund for the year ending 2004 but the Hospital Insurance Fund (HIF), also tabled for the same year, was denied a clean audit by Auditor General Larry Dennis because of lack of supporting evidence.

Mr. Bascome told the House that staff had worked diligently on completing papers for outstanding audits.

He said the denial of opinion on the HIF was due to shortcomings within the Department of Social Insurance over several years.

Mr. Bascome said problems were encountered with manual claims processing, inconsistent archiving and record keeping, plus a lack of clear documented policies.

Last year Mr. Bascome tabled financial statements for the HIF and MRF for 2001-03.

He told the House: "I have to admit to being disappointed today to not be tabling financial statements for all outstanding years.

"Although the working papers for those years were completed by staff of the Department of Social Insurance, the audit process has not been able to move swiftly enough to allow me to put them all before you today.

"Unless we can complete the remaining audits quickly, there is the risk that we will continue to receive either a qualification or a denial of opinion for all outstanding statements for the period of 2004 to the present."

Mr. Bascome said that only by knowing what the issues were in a particular year can they be corrected in a subsequent year.

"Therefore we run the risk of an audit issue coming up in the 2005 statements that will carry through to the present if we don't complete all of those statements in a timely manner."

To address the situation more resources will be given to the Health Insurance section said Minister Bascome.

He added: "This is not an issue of the financial statements being incomplete, but it is a matter of audit resources not able to review those statements in as timely a manner as possible."