Patients wrongly wiped from practice lists to cut costs !

Exclusive: GPs are seeing current patients wrongly wiped from practice lists as primary care organisations across the UK step up sweeping list-cleansing exercises in a bid to cut costs, a Pulse investigation reveals.

The East Finchley Medical Centre in Barnet, north London, has been refunded £9,000 after NHS Barnet admitted it had struck more than 600 patients that were still being seen by the practice from its list.

But its successful appeal came as a Pulse investigation gathering data from 103 PCOs revealed that NHS managers stripped more than 100,000 patients from practice lists last year, and plan to ramp up list-cleansing schemes over the next 12 months.

Some 36% of PCOs are currently running list-cleansing schemes, and 51% said they planned to run one within the next 12 months.

Across 37 organisations able to provide data on the number of patients they had removed from lists, a total of 116,476 patients were taken off in the past 12 months, an average of 3,148 per PCO.

Among 25 PCOs able to give financial figures, a total of £3,119,230 was recorded in savings. The largest savings were £646,000 in NHS Sheffield, which removed 9,500 patients from practice lists in the past 12 months, and £500,000 in NHS Berkshire West, which removed 7,734 patients.

Eddie





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