{
  "id": 9300234,
  "title": "‘Ghost patient’ policy wrongly removing at-risk people from GP lists, doctors say",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/23/ghost-patient-policy-wrongly-removing-at-risk-people-from-gp-lists",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-23T08:00:18.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Guardian Health",
    "slug": "guardian-health",
    "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/23/nhs-england-ghost-patient-policy-wrongly-removing-vulnerable-people"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "NHS England initiative to reduce cut-off period to three months ‘disproportionately affecting’ most deprived areas An NHS policy to remove “ghost patients” from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England without vital healthcare, analysis has found. Under previous NHS rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}