Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the account NHS England takes in its approach to the deregistering of "ghost" patients of those general practitioner practices which experience a high degree of mobility amongst their patients.

NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary medical services in England. NHS England issues guidance, Tackling list inflation for primary medical services, to help general practitioner practices manage their patient lists. This can be found at:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tack-infla.pdf

It is good practice for NHS England to undertake regular ‘list cleansing’ exercises to ensure that their patient lists are up-to-date in order to promote fairness and efficiency.