NHS adverts are encouraging people to visit their local community pharmacy for common ailments. They certainly have an impact so why have some in the sector been complaining about them, wonders our columnist Liam Stapleton

The message to encourage people to use their community pharmacy as the first port of call for common conditions is not new.

It is something that the sector has encouraged for many years. The NHS is currently providing a free marketing campaign that is designed to drive footfall into community pharmacies to get advice and purchase medicines, increasing sales and profit. So why the complaints?

The argument is that there is currently a lack of capacity to cope with the influx of patients asking for advice and products for low acuity conditions. There is no national minor ailments scheme, so how can pharmacies hope to provide a service to these patients?

Supporting self-care is something that has never been funded through the NHS and has always been seen as a commercial activity. We have called for pharmacy to be the first port of call and, in previous years, have collaborated with the NHS to promote this message. If this isn’t working now, we need to examine our identity and business model.

Pharmacy has been seen, by itself and the public, as an important source of advice about health; healthcare on the high street is an oft used trope. We have promoted ourselves as a health hub within the community, more accessible than GP practices, that can help people to improve their health, from health promotion to managing common ailments to supporting patients with long-term conditions.

Whether we call it responding to symptoms, managing minor ailments or treating low acuity conditions, this activity has been a traditional part of community pharmacy from well before the formation of the NHS.

It’s free publicity, stop complaining

Members of the public are able to walk into a pharmacy without an appointment, ask for advice and purchase a product that will meet their needs. If we want to maintain this activity as part of our identify, why complain when we receive free marketing? Perhaps we need to examine the business model for it more closely.

Let’s take an OTC medicine with an assumed average cost of £6. If we remove the VAT and assume a markup of 50 per cent, that’s a profit of £1.70. Take off some allowance for costs (like rent, rates, heating and lighting) and the net profit before staff costs starts to look very thin.