The British Medical Association (BMA) is incorrect to suggest there are 6.4 million more GP patients registered in England than there were in 2019.
In a letter to the new health secretary Wes Streeting, shared on X (formerly Twitter) and viewed over 28,000 times, the chair of the BMA’s GP committee Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said that patient numbers had “increased by 6.4 million in the past 5 years alone”.
But this isn’t right, and the patient register has only grown by about half that.
Professional bodies should take care to avoid errors in statistics they use, and quickly rectify any mistakes when they occur.
As of June 2024 (when the letter from the BMA was written), there were 63,375,801 registered patients at GP practices in England, up by 3.5 million on…
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