CHICOPEE, Mass. - Chicopee Mayor John Vieau confirmed health insurance premiums were paid out incorrectly to former city employees, some of whom were deceased.

Vieau said Monday the errors amounted to less than 1% of the total health care budget for city employees. He also said staff turnover in the human resources department led to some mistakes.

So, newly hired chief human resource officer Stephen Zajchowski will be applying new precautions to better keep track of employee records.

"We're going to be mandating that all city department heads report monthly to the H.R. department," Zajchowski said. "Any staffing issues that are happening in terms of terminations, people that might be resigning, just to make sure that our status changes and our HR team can ensure that we're updating the information on our benefits system to reflect those changes, so we're not having those all going forward to continue the problem."

Zajchowski said the city is also evaluating moving to a digital record keeping process they say will eliminate any errors which might happen on paper through a manual process.

The city is also instituting an enrollment verification process with all departments and employees to make sure all plans are correct and updated. They are also looking for more help in the H.R. department.

"And we'll be requesting an additional benefits person," Zajchowski said  "Which I think the mayor will talk about in a little bit, to the position of benefits coordinator, and this will be crucial. Their job is going to be reconcile our insurance bills as they come in every month to the department to ensure that premiums are charged correctly and the billing accurately reflects our benefits, enrollment situation."

Mayor Vieau said they've identified more than 50 people who were incorrectly receiving dental benefits, and they’re still investigating to find the number of ineligible people who received health benefits.