One fifth of GP consultations are related to minor ailments, including cold and flu symptoms, which costs the NHS around £370 million a year [1]. Suffering from a cold and cough drives many to pharmacy over the winter period, but these minor ailments rarely need a visit to the doctor or out of hours services.
Why provide a Winter Health Service in your pharmacy?
- Community pharmacy plays an essential role in supporting people to stay well over the winter months and are often the place to turn to when feeling unwell.
- Pharmacists and their teams are experts in providing advice and recommending treatments that are inexpensive to help reduce the discomfort of minor illnesses such as colds and coughs.
- Expanding your service portfolio has many advantages – it will not only act as an additional income generator but customers will recognise the excellent service and access your pharmacy again.
- Supports the NHS long term plan.
Setting up your Winter Health Service
We provide a number of resources to help you set up your service:
PGDs and downloadable resources
- We work with Pharmadoctor to offer members a range of PGDs to support you to offer treatment for a range of winter ailments including ear infection, cold sores and sore throats.
- Downloadable posters
- Downloadable social media resources
- An interactive profitability calculator to estimate the potential profitability of new services for your pharmacy.
- Sore throat test and treat service toolkit
- Available PGDs
We have a range of pre-recorded webinars, including how to set up and winter health service, please see our webinar page for the full range of resources available.
Marketing materials
Training & health promotion support
- Counter Excellence module: Winter health
- Pharmacy Excellence module: Winter health
- Pharmacy Excellence module: Sore throat test and treat service: collecting a throat swab
- Download our health promotion briefing sheet
[1] www.pharmacymagazine.co.uk/winter-ailments-help-cut-the-queues