ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope made the complaint yesterday after The Canberra Times revealed NSW had about $31million in ''outstanding debt'' for treatment of its residents in Canberra's public hospitals, according to ACT estimates.

It has triggered a cross-border dispute and demands from a peak public hospital doctors' group for the NSW Government to cough up more money.

A spokesman for NSW Deputy Premier and Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt said discussions were continuing.

''NSW Health has asked for an independent audit of data and coding to be carried out in relation to the payments,'' she said.

''NSW continues to make monthly progress payments to the ACT as per the NSW-ACT funding agreement. On top of this, NSW has made further payments to ACT Health of $20million in late March early April.''

Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation ACT president Professor Peter Collignon urged NSW to stop short-changing the territory.

''I've never believed that we get adequately paid for the cost of those people on our system,'' he said.

''When I look at it I must admit simplistically if our hospitals cost $700million and a third of patients are from NSW, the first gambit would be maybe a third of the costs ought to be paid by NSW then.''

Mr Stanhope said he was ''never satisfied'' with agreement for NSW to pick up the bills for its residents treated in ACT public hospitals.

''We want to be paid the real and entire and whole cost of providing this service and we want an agreement that reflects that,'' he said.

''At this stage, it's fair to say the dispute is about $30 million - what we regard as back pay or back payments where there hasn't been agreement yet on the data or the numbers.''

About one in four people who used public health services provided in the ACT were from NSW.

NSW residents accounted for one in two patients in some expensive areas such as cancer treatment.

NSW paid about $5.5million a month to cover the ''estimated costs'' of treating NSW residents in the territory's public hospitals.

Six months ago, NSW stopped ''topping up'' these payments to reflect the actual cost of care for its residents, causing ''great frustration'' to the ACT Government.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.