02 January 2024 , 00:01
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Nearly six million "ghost patients" - who might not really exist - are registered with GPs in England, shock figures show.
Official NHS figures reveal that there are more people on the books at surgeries across the country than the size of the population. This means practices could be receiving more cash than they should.
New data shows there are 62.9 million registered patients - even though England's population is estimated to have been around 57.1 million in 2022. This means there are 5.8 million such "ghost patients", analysis by PA News Agency suggests.
This has gone up steeply in the past five years. In 2018 it is estimated there were 3.6million most patients than people - meaning there's been a 61% rise.
GP surgeries received an average of £164.64 per registered patient in 2022-23. This means practices could have received around £955 million for patients who might not exist.
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The Royal College of GPs said surgeries "try hard to keep their patient lists up to date" and are not deliberately profiting. It added that some patients, including babies, may not be included in the count, while others have left the surgery or moved elsewhere.
Dr Victoria Tzortziou-Brown, vice chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said: "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 known discrepancy between the estimated size of the local population and the number of people registered at GP practices can occur for a number of reasons. In addition to list inflation, which incorrectly increases the count of patients, there are also issues associated with 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 said it works with GP surgeries to review and update patient 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 said: "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 effectively halted by difficulties in obtaining core data and our priorities shifted from this position with the NHS response to Covid 19. We have not yet revisited the issue as we direct our resources to where the intelligence indicates the most appropriate priorities sit."