{"id":779870,"date":"2026-09-23T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T10:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779870\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T10:36:09","slug":"ghost-patient-policy-wrongly-removing-at-risk-people-from-gp-lists-doctors-say-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779870\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ghost patient\u2019 policy wrongly removing at-risk people from GP lists, doctors say | NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

An NHS policy to remove \u201cghost patients\u201d from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England<\/a> without vital healthcare, analysis has found.<\/p>\n

Under previous NHS<\/a> rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to respond to outreach. But under NHS England\u2019s accelerated list validation timeline, introduced last October, patients now have only three months to reply.<\/p>\n

According to analysis by Healthtech-1, registered GP lists in English practices declined by 483,019 patients between October 2025 and July 2026, with the most deprived fifth of practices accounting for about 138,400 of the net decline \u2013 just under 30% of the national decline.<\/p>\n

While GP lists need reviewing as people move away or die, GPs<\/a> have said the accelerated timeline has inadvertently led to patients from deprived areas being incorrectly removed, creating barriers to receiving treatment.<\/p>\n

Consequently, GPs and practice managers have reported having to re-register vulnerable and elderly patients, creating an additional administrative burden.<\/p>\n

De-registering patients can also cause gaps in care and disruption to treatment. Since GP practices\u2019 income also depend on the number of registered patients, a drop can leave practices struggling to pay for running costs.<\/p>\n

A GP at a university practice in Southampton said the accelerated timeline was causing problems because patients were being incorrectly removed from their list and were struggling to access their prescriptions and treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you give prescriptions out to people, they\u2019re on repeat and once they get kicked off the lists they can no longer access any prescriptions,\u201d he said. \u201cThe risk is that if you\u2019re unable to access your repeat prescriptions, your treatment will be affected.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf you\u2019re narrowing the window from six to three months, more people are going to be kicked off and therefore more people will be put into the position where they cannot access treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The GP also warned that, besides reducing a practice\u2019s income, the policy change was hitting patients from deprived and vulnerable backgrounds hardest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our case, we had around 100 people who were taken off our list who didn\u2019t leave at all. That worked out as around \u00a310,000 in lost income for our practice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were later contacted by these patients telling us that they couldn\u2019t access their prescriptions and that they hadn\u2019t gone anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money we\u2019ve lost hasn\u2019t been compensated, and I know of another practice locally that has lost \u00a3100,000 that they also won\u2019t be compensated for.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those who have been erroneously taken off, we\u2019re being penalised. We\u2019re going to have to make cuts somehow to make up the shortfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Clare Bannon, the chair of the British Medical Association\u2019s GP committee, said GPs across England support the principle of keeping patient lists accurate but the current list-cleansing process is \u201cseriously flawed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bannon said: \u201cWe have called on NHS England to pause the exercise. The approach is overly aggressive, leading to practices losing tens of thousands of pounds in income and causing active patients, including vulnerable individuals, to be removed in error.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is essential that active patients are not deprived of access to a GP through no fault of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

An NHS spokesperson said: \u201cThere are robust checks in place to ensure that vulnerable groups are not removed from GP lists \u2013 people are contacted through multiple different channels with the thorough processes lasting up to five months before any action is taken.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis process ensures that patient contact details are correct so that they receive vital information about screening and vaccination appointments, while ensuring NHS funding resources are allocated fairly with money no longer spent on people who do not live in England.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An NHS policy to remove \u201cghost patients\u201d from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-779870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}