She is also facing a fourth charge of failing to keep detailed clinical records during that period.
The hearing began in Auckland this morning and the midwife, who has interim name suppression, appeared via audio-visual link.
She was an hour late to proceedings and declined to switch on her camera.
The Midwifery Council of New Zealand’s first witness was Murray, who explained that midwives claimed pay from the Ministry of Health and could also claim for rural support and secondary midwife services.
Murray said the investigation showed “many” of the women whom the midwife claimed to have served rurally actually lived in the city.
When the audit began in 2019, Murray said the midwife was asked to provide documentation on the 137 women she had made claims on.
The midwife told the auditors there would be “gaps” in her documentation because some of her notes were “destroyed” in a Waikato flood in 2017, Murray said.
The claims where documentation was lost in a flood were ultimately excluded from the investigation, Murray said.
She also said the midwife had named 16 midwives she had worked with, or covered for, in her claims, seven of whom responded to the investigation.
Those midwives highlighted several inconsistencies in the woman’s claims, including that the midwife was not recorded as present for many of the births, rural services or ambulance transfers that she claimed.
In some instances the midwife was not even in the country when she claimed to have delivered these...
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