Health insurance companies identified €505m worth of erroneous healthcare bills last year, the health insurers’ association ZN said on Wednesday. But of that, just €11m was due to actual fraud, the organisation said in a statement.

Most of the erroneous bills were due to genuine errors, double billing and billing for treatment not covered by insurance, ZN said. In total, the sector processed care bills for €41bn.

Health insurers carried out 1,045 investigations into potential fraud, identifying suspicious payments totalling €20m. Just over half of that was due to deliberate attempts to defraud insurers, ZN said.

The fraud was mostly identified in bills for long term care, paramedic care and mental health services and providers themselves were responsible for 80% of the total.