A warning has been issued about ‘ghost patients’ costing the UK taxpayer hundreds of millions a year.
The issues of ‘ghost patients’ arises when people die or move away but are still registered with their GP surgery. While it may seem like a relatively harmless statistical issue, it is costing the NHS millions as GP surgeries are being paid for patients that will never be treated.
The issue costs around £650million each year according to The Telegraph as GP surgeries are paid around £130 per registered patient. Routine data audits known as ‘list cleansing’ is meant to tackle the problem by removing ghost patients. But the British Medical Association, BMA, has warned it’s been too aggressive. Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, said: “Paper records, outdated computers and fragmented systems all contribute to the administrative nightmare our health service has become.
“Waste needs to be cut in the NHS, but that will be increasingly difficult without the technology to bear down on unnecessary administration. Ghost patients are exactly the kind of problem that follows.
“Until that happens, hundreds of millions of pounds will keep flowing out of the door to no one.”
List cleansing has been going on for several years and involves sending letters to suspected ghost patients to check if they want to stay registered. The BMA says practices are now being told to remove patients if they don’t hear back from them within three months rather than the usual six.
However, the BMA has warned that some genuine patients have been removed during this process. Not only does this risk the patients missing out on important reminders for health checks but it also puts an admin burden on the practice that will need to re-register them.
Dr David Wrigley, the BMA’s GP committee deputy chairman, told the paper: “This aggressive list-cleansing exercise has reduced GP practice patient lists by over 300,000 over the past 12 months, equating to practices losing just under £40m in funding for essential GP medical services.
“This comes at a time when practices in England are already severely underfunded.”
To avoid becoming a ghost patient if you are moving away, you should register with a new GP in your new area as soon as possible. Your current GP surgery will be told automatically that you have left once you’re registered with a new surgery, according to the NHS.
If a person dies, relatives should contact their doctors, dentists and anyone else providing medical care to inform them of the death and cancel any upcoming appointments or notifications, according to Age UK.
An NHS England spokesman told the Telegraph: “It is important that funding follows patients, rather than practices receiving money for patients no longer registered or living in England.
“NHS England has always worked with GP practices to regularly review their lists and improve their accuracy – with robust checks to ensure people are not removed inappropriately and patients contacted before any action is taken – ensuring money and staff time is not wasted on activity like unnecessary vaccination recalls.”
