Mystery as six million ‘ghost sufferers’ registered with GP surgical procedures in England
Nearly six million “ghost patients” – who may probably not exist – are registered with GPs in England, shock figures present.
Official NHS figures reveal that there are extra folks on the books at surgical procedures throughout the nation than the dimensions of the inhabitants. This means practices might be receiving more money than they need to.
New information exhibits there are 62.9 million registered sufferers – though England’s inhabitants is estimated to have been round 57.1 million in 2022. This means there are 5.8 million such “ghost patients”, evaluation by PA News Agency suggests.
This has gone up steeply previously 5 years. In 2018 it’s estimated there have been 3.6million most sufferers than folks – which means there’s been a 61% rise.
GP surgical procedures acquired a median of £164.64 per registered affected person in 2022-23. This means practices may have acquired round £955 million for sufferers who won’t exist.
The Royal College of GPs stated surgical procedures “try hard to keep their patient lists up to date” and should not intentionally profiting. It added that some sufferers, together with infants, will not be included within the rely, whereas others have left the surgical procedure or moved elsewhere.
Dr Victoria Tzortziou-Brown, vice chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, stated: “GP practices try hard to keep their patient lists as up to date as possible, but this relies on timely and accurate information about the movement of patients so that individuals are not inappropriately removed from a GP list. So-called ‘ghost patients’ are nothing sinister, and are not a case of surgeries deliberately profiting by keeping patients on their lists when they shouldn’t be there – they are a records management issue.
“This identified discrepancy between the estimated measurement of the native inhabitants and the variety of folks registered at GP practices can happen for plenty of causes. In addition to listing inflation, which incorrectly will increase the rely of sufferers, there are additionally points related to under-coverage.
“For example, babies can initially be recorded against their parent’s records and are not included in the national patient register until formally registered.” An NHS England spokeswoman stated it really works with GP surgical procedures to assessment and replace affected person lists “and it is vital that practices do this on a regular basis, so they are as accurate as possible”.
A spokeswoman for the NHS Counter Fraud Authority stated: “The NHSCFA had planned to undertake an intelligence assessment on the nature and scale of GP capitation fraud in 2019. This was to improve our understanding of the risk posed to the NHS by fraud and error in general practice, primarily as regards GP capitation (this is the fixed amount of money that is paid to GPs for every registered patient).
“It was successfully halted by difficulties in acquiring core information and our priorities shifted from this place with the NHS response to Covid 19. We haven’t but revisited the difficulty as we direct our sources to the place the intelligence signifies essentially the most acceptable priorities sit.”
