THE system for billing primary care trusts and GP practices for hospital activity in the borough is not working correctly, leading to vast sums being wrongly claimed from primary care and patients' health being put at risk, a GP has claimed.
Dr Steven Lindall, GP at the Penrhyn Surgery, in Higham Hill Road, Walthamstow ,says his practice was last year charged 1,476 payments totalling £256,885 where invoices or correspondence were incomplete.
Whipps Cross bills NHS Waltham Forest (the primary care trust) for costs from patient referrals, which is then passed on to surgeries.
But Dr Lindall says in thousands of payments last year there was missing information, meaning NHS Waltham Forest and practices were overcharged and potentially important clinical information about patients not passed on.
Dr Lindall says practices are identifying where invoices or correspondence are missing but NHS Waltham Forest, whose chief executive Sally Gorham has admitted is struggling to cope with the number of queries, is not querying the hospital's bills.
He said: “We want NHS Waltham Forest to force the hospital to look again at the queries, not just rubber-stamp them without the missing correspondence.”
In one case a patient at his practice was admitted to Whipps on September 9 last year with asthma and, according to the hospital's data, discharged on January 19 this year.
But the patient actually only spent three weeks in hospital, meaning the PCT and practice were overcharged by thousands of pounds.
The missing information has led to the PCT being overcharged by an estimated £19m in the last financial year.
Dr Lindall says this affects surgeries ability to commission new services.
But Dr Lindall is also worried about the effect of the missing correspondence to patients' health.
He said: “There may be a change to a patient's medication, but GPs might not know about it because of the missing information.
“The thing I am really worried about is if a patient is diagnosed with cancer while in hospital, and their GP does not know.”
A Whipps spokeswoman said the hospital had a lower than average error rate among London trusts.
An NHS Waltham Forest spokesman said the trust is investigating Dr Lindall's complaint.
He said: "It would be inappropriate to comment on the detail until the investigation has concluded.
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