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Well, GPs should not be paid for ghost patients should they? Only a tiny minority of such patients are due to fraud, so the number of prosecutions will be minimal. The head of the NHS anti-fraud dept just wanted to look tough in the press for his managers. The BMA must have been approached by the Sunday Times because they did find a GP willing to give a counter-view (unfortunately not a very effective one). If we had a decent union that was quick to rebut anti-doctor stories they would have pointed out that the vast majority of ghost patients are due to poor communications from third parties (un-notified deaths in hospital or patients forgetting to re-register when they move). A competent union might also have been quick to demand that any monies saved in a counter-fraud sweep be re-applied to global sums. Mark