GPs facing income loss due to list cleansing call for emergency payments

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By Daniel Pye

GPs have called for emergency ‘parachute payments’ after hundreds of thousands of patients have been removed from practice lists.

Londonwide local medical committees (LMCs) have warned practices have faced a rapid loss of income in a short time frame due to the deduction of ‘ghost patients’ from lists.

NHS England (NHSE) data shows since November 2025 nearly 830,000 patients have been removed from lists.

A newsletter update from Hillingdon LMC stated that the committees are now calling for emergency payments for the most affected practices.

This would offer “better stability” in the face of 134,000 London patients being deducted from lists between July 2025 and July 2026.

Practices have reported to Londonwide LMCs the loss of between 1% and 10% of their patient numbers since the exercise began.

These practices received hundreds of FP69 flags, which give GPs three months to contact patients identified as having potentially moved out the area to confirm their address information. Until October 2025, practices were given six months to do this.