Exclusive A North West London practice that mistakenly registered nearly 10,600 patients without their consent has pledged to return all capitation fees it received in error.
As exclusively revealed by Pulse, the GP Pathfinder Clinics admitted to re-registering former patients in error without their knowledge.
The issue first came to light when GPs in North West London contacted Pulse having noticed they were losing ‘hundreds’ of patients from their practice lists.
GP Pathfinder Clinics admitted to Pulse that it ‘re-registered’ some patients in error but blamed a third-party contractor and said it ‘would never’ have done so deliberately.
According to the practice, a number of ‘active’ patients were deducted by Primary Care Support England (PCSE) but in trying to retrieve those patients, another 10,599 were also mistakenly re-registered.
There were concerns that thousands of pounds in capitation fees were going to be lost to nearby practices due to the error.
But the practice has now pledged that all fees ‘will be correctly distributed’ and that it ‘will not benefit financially’ from the mistake.
A spokesperson for the practice said: ‘All capitation fees will be correctly distributed and GP Pathfinders will not benefit financially from this mistake. GP Pathfinders has invested considerably in rectifying the issue.’
PCSE, which has been supplied by the company Capita since 2015, told Pulse that 530 GP Pathfinder Clinics patients were deducted from their list in the past 12 months, but said that this was ‘unrelated’ to the issue affecting 10,599 patients.
A Capita spokesperson told Pulse: ‘GP Pathfinder Clinics has contacted PCSE to make us aware of their mistake in registering 10,599 patients.
‘This is unrelated to any routine data quality checks undertaken by PCSE on behalf of NHS England.
‘As part of these checks, FP69 flags may be placed on a patient’s record. Practices have six months to review these and take action.
‘As a result of this process there have been 530 GP Pathfinder Clinics patients deducted due to an FP69 flag over the past 12 months.
‘We will support the practice and the ICB with their investigations and any remedial steps they are taking.’
North West London ICB has declined to comment further on the issue as it said it is still investigating what happened.
When the issue first came to light, North West London GPs expressed concern at seeing ‘significant number of patients’ being deduced, who were ‘upset and annoyed’ that they have been removed.
They also told Pulse that there are possible patient safety issues with patients who were undergoing urgent care or referrals at their original practice and have suddenly become deregistered.
Some expressed concern that patients may have been confused by the GP Pathfinder Clinics website, thinking they were registering with a separate online option.
There were also unsupported accusations of patient data having been accessed ‘via AI’, which GP Pathfinder Clinics has denied.
