AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
9 October 2011 Last updated at 14:37 GMT One GP said his practice faced problems after it removed 1,500 patients from its list
The total is approximately 9m, compared with the 7.75m population, a series of Freedom of Information requests found.
The system has become "a real mess" because of the difficulty in keeping track of people moving around the city, Labour MP Emily Thornberry has said.
The London Local Medical Council (LLMC) added that names can vanish by mistake.
Lists are "cleansed" by surgeries which cannot contact patients and at least 460,000 names have been removed in the past five years, the figures show.
People would be dropped if they had not spoken to a practice in six months and there was no response to at least two written requests, the Department of Health said.
"This ensures that GPs are not paid for patients who have moved out of the area and who are no longer receiving services from that practice," said a spokesperson.
"If patients are contacted and confirm they remain in the area, then they will remain on the practice list and continue to receive services."
'Nature of London'But Dr Michelle Drage, from the LLMC, said people could become "really scared" when they tried to book appointments and were told they were no longer registered, thinking they had "done something wrong" when this was not the case.
Surgeries regularly "cleanse" their lists if they lose touch with patients, but this can lead to mistakes Patients who are wrongly deleted from lists must re-register to keep their doctor.
In the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, this was the case for 61% of those removed in a recent overhaul, the documents showed.
Another 10,000 people had to do the same in nearby Newham in recent months.
Mrs Thornberry, the shadow health and social care secretary and MP for Islington South and Finsbury, said people would not necessarily respond to letters from surgeries, particularly if their English was poor.
"In Islington, between the 2005 election and the 2010 election, there were 65% of the population who had moved.
"It's very difficult to keep up with people," she added. "It's the nature of living in inner London."
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