The Otago District Health Board did not get, or ask for, compensatory government funding when multimillion-dollar fraud was uncovered at the board in 2006.
Chairman Richard Thomson yesterday said the board had never discussed compensatory funding as an option.
"There is not really a mechanism for that to occur. It would have been asking for money to be taken away from other district health boards and given to us."
For much of the time the board's previous chief information officer Michael Swann and his business associate Kerry Harford were stealing millions from it, the board was operating in deficit.
The defrauded $16.9 million was not lost in one lump sum, but over a number of years.
During the years the board was in deficit, it received deficit support from the Government, which could be seen as compensatory funding, even though that is not what it was, Mr Thomson said.
The board did not intend to ask for compensatory funding.
"You can't go back and spend what you didn't spend five years ago.
"It is accepted in each of previous years there were opportunities that were lost, but you can't go back and recover those opportunities."
If the board was able to recover any of the money through reparation, civil action or insurance cover, it would expect to keep the money, he said.
He has previously speculated the board may be able to recover between $4 million and $10 million.
A confidential settlement has already been reached with Harford for his part in the civil action.
