The Sydney-based Novacare Health dodged more than $170 million in financial penalties over alleged failures at the Calvary Mater Newcastle hospital.
NSW Health conceded it did not make Novacare pay these penalties because it wanted to maintain relationships under the Mater's public -private partnership (PPP).
The abatements issue has come under scrutiny at the NSW parliamentary inquiry into the Mater mould and maintenance scandal.
The inquiry's third hearing will be held on Thursday.
Inquiry chair Amanda Cohn said "the government's stated strategy of working in good faith with the various corporations managing the infrastructure at Calvary Mater has clearly failed".
"A partnership like this should never have existed," Dr Cohn said.
"Novacare's stated goal of 'preserving value for senior creditors' should never be a consideration in the running of a public hospital.
"These legal disputes do nothing to improve safety for patients and staff at the hospital."
Novacare director Victoria Rigg previously said "less than $5 million worth of abatements" had been paid over the PPP's "17 years of operation".
But in a document tabled to the inquiry, Novacare director James Ward revealed that $177 million of "disputed abatements" had occurred under the Mater's PPP.
An internal NSW Health Ministry document said these "abatement fines" against Novacare were for "non-compliance with their obligations under the contract".
NSW Shadow Minister for Health Sarah Mitchell said "this new information on abatements raises even more questions".
"This means the evidence that we received was either incomplete or inaccurate," Ms Mitchell said.
She said Thursday's hearing was "an opportunity for Hunter New England Health (HNEH) to provide the full picture".
"They have to explain how the $177 million in disputed abatements accumulated, what the government knew and when, and why the committee was not given this information at the first hearing."
When asked if the $177 million figure was accurate, HNEH did not directly answer the question.
A HNEH statement said this was "a matter Novacare is best placed to answer".
"We otherwise refer to the evidence provided on behalf of NSW Health to the inquiry," the statement said.
When Dr Cohn asked NSW Health Infrastructure's chief executive Emma Skulander at the first hearing to reveal the abatements' value, she said "tens of millions of dollars".
The Mater operates under a PPP between Novacare and NSW Health's Health Administration Corporation (HAC).
Under the PPP, Novacare subcontracts the hospital's maintenance to American corporate giant Honeywell.
Ms Skulander told the first hearing that Hunter New England Health acts as HAC "in administering the contract".
She added that Hunter New England Health chief executive Tracey McCosker was "responsible for that contract administration".
Ms McCosker told the inquiry's first hearing that Novacare had passed on the abatement penalties to Honeywell.
"Unfortunately, that made the relationship worse and it started to get quite toxic," Ms McCosker said.
"They were refuting and disputing our breach notices. I felt like we needed to do some sort of intervention to try and get the relationship on the ground better.
"So what I did was put a hold on the abatements in good faith to try and call the parties around the table, negotiate and come to an agreement on how we could work better."
Ms Skulander told the first hearing that NSW Health left the penalties "essentially owing" to try to keep Novacare "afloat".
If Novacare was made to pay the penalties and then went into administration, the hospital's "clinical service continuity" could be affected, she said.
Novacare said at the inquiry's second hearing last month that it was headed for voluntary administration.
NSW Health said at that point it was "confident that safe and continuous services [at the hospital] will be maintained during any period of voluntary administration".
This followed Novacare offering the private arm of the Mater PPP to NSW Health for $2.
NSW Health rejected the offer, saying "it does not take into account the potentially tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of liabilities and risk that would also be transferred to the state".
Ms Rigg told the first hearing that the PPP's project deed "sets out hundreds of key performance indicators that the various service providers have to comply with".
"If one of those is not complied with ... then that triggers what is described as an abatement," Ms Rigg said.
These abatements were intended to be "effectively withheld from service payments", which NSW Health makes to Novacare for its role in maintaining the hospital.
During the inquiry, whistleblower Luke Carroll has accused Honeywell of corruption, falsifying records, shredding documents, intimidation and maintenance failures at the Mater.
Mr Carroll, a former senior project manager for assets and infrastructure with Honeywell at the Mater, said the hospital's maintenance program had a "core problem of wilful neglect".
"I've never seen anything like I've seen at the Calvary Mater. It is dire," Mr Carroll told the inquiry.
Honeywell has denied the allegations.
