The recent mild winter meant that pharmacy did not experience significant extra demand, such as higher levels of OTC medicines sales, Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott told an inquiry into winter pressures.

Speaking at an oral evidence session for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health, Mr Darracott said the mild weather would make it more difficult to measure the impact of winter self-care NICE campaigns such as ‘Treat Yourself Better’. It may also have contributed to the lack of commissioning under NHS England’s winter pressures toolkit. This was designed to enable rapid commissioning of three pharmacy services over the winter – flu vaccination, emergency supply of medicines and support for self-care in deprived populations.

Chairman of the BMA’s GP committee Dr Chaand Nagpaul said that there were few incentives for elements of the healthcare system to work together.

And supporting people with long-term conditions to stay out of hospital was a bigger challenge than managing minor ailments because of its relatively greater cost.

Mr Darracott highlighted some of the incentives within the NHS that pushed patients in different directions and caused confusion among patients. The NHS 111 hotline, for example, encouraged some patients to visit A&E unnecessarily. Dr Nagpaul said that NHS111 should be fronted by clinicians because it was simply a computer-generated algorithm that was based on response rates rather than quality.