I have a PL/SQL function that performs an update/insert on an Oracle database that maintains a target total and returns the difference between the existing value and the new value.
Here is the code I have so far:

FUNCTION calcTargetTotal(accountId varchar2, newTotal numeric ) RETURN number is  
oldTotal numeric(20,6);  
difference numeric(20,6);  

begin
    difference := 0;  
    begin  
        select value into oldTotal
        from target_total
        WHERE account_id = accountId
        for update of value;

        if (oldTotal != newTotal) then
            update target_total
            set value = newTotal
            WHERE account_id = accountId
            difference := newTotal - oldTotal;
        end if;
    exception
        when NO_DATA_FOUND then
        begin
            difference := newTotal;
            insert into target_total
                ( account_id, value )
            values
                ( accountId, newTotal );

        -- sometimes a race condition occurs and this stmt fails
        -- in those cases try to update again
        exception
            when DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX then
            begin
                difference := 0;
                select value into oldTotal
                from target_total
                WHERE account_id = accountId
                for update of value;

                if (oldTotal != newTotal) then
                    update target_total
                    set value = newTotal
                    WHERE account_id = accountId
                    difference := newTotal - oldTotal;
                end if;
            end;
        end;
    end;
    return difference
end calcTargetTotal;

This works as expected in unit tests with multiple threads never failing.
However when loaded on a live system we have seen this fail with a stack trace looking like this:

ORA-01403: no data found  
ORA-00001: unique constraint () violated  
ORA-01403: no data found  

The line numbers (which I have removed since they are meaningless out of context) verify that the first update fails due to no data, the insert fail due to uniqueness, and the 2nd update is failing with no data, which should be impossible.

From what I have read on other thread a MERGE statement is also not atomic and could suffer similar problems.

Does anyone have any ideas how to prevent this from occurring?