NHS - Normally Honest Staff
Phantom patients net GPs millions: How dishonest doctors claim NHS cash for dead patients and non-existent treatments By Neil Sears, Eleanor Harding and Sophie Borland
Dishonest GPs are defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by claiming money for ‘ghost patients’.
Some family doctors are retaining the details of patients who have died or left the country so they still receive annual NHS payments of up to £100 for every person registered with them. In a separate scam, there is evidence of surgeries inserting bogus information on genuine medical records to claim vast sums of NHS cash for check-ups that never take place.
The spotlight has been thrown on the fraud after four doctors were suspended over allegations they earned millions by claiming to treat more than a thousand people who were overseas or had died. The doctors claimed to have 8,150 patients on their books – but the General Medical Council and NHS fraud specialists have launched inquiries into claims that up to 3,000 of those were either non-existent, or genuine but with false information on their records. In addition, some patients at the practice, in South London, were falsely recorded as suffering from dementia or obesity, or as having been given drugs or flu vaccinations they had not had. By inserting these false records, the GPs would have been able to boost their income by claiming extra payments for carrying out check-ups which were incentivised under Labour’s controversial Quality and Outcome Framework.
Resigned: Doctors J & A Singh denied that more than 1,000 patients registered at their clinic were either dead or had moved overseas. The deception could have endangered lives and also affected patients’ life insurance policies. Every patient on the practice register is now being called in for a health check to ensure records are accurate. The latest scandal focuses on the Streatham Place Surgery in Streatham, South London, which was run by husband and wife GPs A &J Singh, 67, and their employees Dr V Patel and Dr N Mazhar. An NHS report into the practice, seen by the Daily Mail, said patient safety could not be guaranteed and that the system of record-keeping was ‘inherently unsafe’.
Last night Dr Singh spoke only briefly at her £1.25million detached home. She said: ‘The investigation which has been going on has not been proved. We have actually resigned our contract to run the practice.’
Asked whether more than 1,000 of her patients lived overseas, and others were dead, she said: ‘No, no, no.’
The GMC confirmed it was investigating the four doctors.
The pay of GPs has soared since the introduction by Labour in 2004 of a ‘bungled’ new contract. Many are now on salaries in excess of £250,000. The NHS pays surgeries up to £100 a year for each patient on their register, regardless of whether they ever have treatment. In 2009 Birmingham GP M Cheema was found to have more than 30 ghost patients, earning him an additional income of about £2,500 a year. Some Primary Care Trusts have sent inspectors to patients’ registered addresses to check whether they actually exist. In one case a family said they had been receiving letters from a surgery addressed to someone they didn’t know for 20 years.