Patients who have not seen their GP for five years faced being barred from surgeries under NHS plans.
Managers will write to people who have not visited a doctor recently and if they do not respond to a second letter they will be removed from their practice’s register of patients.
The cost-cutting drive is designed to identify people who have moved away or died, but doctors fear it could effectively deny NHS services to many people, particularly adolescents and young men.
GPs are paid between £77-150 a year for each patient on their lists, and health chiefs say such schemes are in operation around the country to weed out “ghost patients” and stop NHS money being wasted by over-paying doctors.
Thousands of patients have been wrongly removed from NHS lists because of over-zealous drives to remove “ghost patients”, with fears they could miss out on checks and vaccinations.
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Now NHS England officials in the east of England have written to GPs saying that they should identify people they have not seen for five year because “it is reasonable to deduce that this group may be the people who no longer require services”.
Doctors were told that if such people were simply in “incredibly good health” they could write back saying they wished to remain registered with their GP.
Dr Richard Vautrey, the British Medical Association’s GP committee deputy chairman, said: “Schemes like this just add to GP workload and irritate patients. Many patients understandably believe that this is something the practice has done to them and don’t realise that this has been carried out by NHS England.
“It therefore needlessly undermines the relationship between GP and patient. Patients should not be punished for being too healthy and being careful about how they use NHS services.”
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “It’s a slippery slope. Patients may receive the letter but not understand what they need to do. What mechanisms have they put in place to allow patients to respond to these letters given how difficult it is to get through to GPs? What if a patient has been in extremely good health, understands the pressures GPs are under and has deliberately not used the service? Will good patients be punished?”
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Officials insisted there was no other way to protect NHS funds and that anyone wrongly taken off lists could re-register with only minimal inconvenience.
However, Guy Watkins, chief executive of Cambridgeshire local medical committees, told Pulse magazine, which uncovered the scheme, that it could deny care to those less likely to visit the doctors.
“There are two peaks where it would apply, men between 20 and 45, and the other peak that’s very interesting is children. A large cohort of children between about eight and fifteen,” he said.
“And that’s clearly a safeguarding issue, because they’re post routinely being seen, post most childhood illnesses, but actually they’re not being routinely brought by their parents.”
Andrea Patman, head of commissioning for NHS England (East) said: “There may be a slight increase in patients contacting their practice for clarification of their action required. NHS England would like to clarify this exercise should not result in decreased access for moderately hard to reach groups.”
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