London NHS GPs' patient lists exceed population

The number of people registered with GPs in London is at least a million higher than the population, research by BBC One's The Politics Show suggests.The total is approximately 9m, compared with the 7.75m population, a series of Freedom of Information requests found.The system has become "a real mess" because of the difficulty in keeping track of people moving around the city, Labour MP Emily Thornberry has said.And names can easily vanish by mistake, the London Local Medical Council added.Lists are regularly "cleansed" by surgeries which cannot contact patients and at least 460,000 names have been removed in the past five years, the figures show.Dr Michelle Drage from the council said people became "really scared" when they tried to book appointments and were told they were no longer registered, thinking they had "done something wrong" when this was not the case.Mrs Thornberry, the shadow health and social care secretary and MP for Islington South and Finsbury, said people would not necessarily respond to letters from surgeries, particularly if their English was poor. "In Islington, between the 2005 election and the 2010 election, there were 65% of the population who had moved."It's very difficult to keep up with people," she added."It's the nature of living in inner London."GPs' practices can also be too efficient, with patients who were removed from lists subsequently having to re-register as they actually wanted to keep their doctor.In the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, this was the case for 61% of those removed in a recent overhaul, the documents showed.Another 10,000 people had to do the same in nearby Newham in recent months.