Withering finds it hard to understand why a national minor ailments service won’t be going ahead in England

I’m not feeling very well. I wouldn’t say I was desperately ill, but I’m definitely a bit off-colour. Where should I go? Should I bother my GP? No, the GPs are very busy aren’t they? They don’t want their surgeries clogged with people who are feeling a bit under the weather. I could try a hospital casualty department. But they’re busy, too, and you’re not supposed to go there unless it’s something serious. I would go to a walk-in centre, but the nearest one is on the other side of town. Looks like I’ll have to go to the GP after all. If only there was somewhere else I could go, somewhere convenient where I could talk about my problem with a health professional and get some advice. If only ...

It’s staggering, isn’t it, that despite the successes of local pharmacy minor ailments schemes, negotiations for a national service in England have come to a dead end. It seems that the fault doesn’t lie with PSNC: they started negotiations back in May and submitted detailed proposals to support their case. No, it seems that the barrier is within NHS England. I have to say I am flabbergasted. After five years of pharmacy minister Earl Howe saying all the right things about what a valuable role pharmacy could play, and that he was doing everything he could to promote pharmacy as part of a wider primary care team, I was starting to believe him. And then there was the publication of the NHS England 5-year plan, which emphasised the importance of developing a much broader multidisciplinary primary care team. So the refusal to pursue a national minor ailments scheme in pharmacies feels like a kick in the teeth.

The case for a minor ailments service is so obvious I’m reminded of an old saying involving blind men on galloping horses. According to NHS England, negotiations have come to an end because it was not able to agree on a price, service specification or service model with PSNC. So, is that it? Should we simply forget about it? The PSNC chief executive, Sue Sharpe, has called for LPCs to push for more local minor ailments services. This will provide more evidence of the contribution they can make, but isn’t there a danger there? If CCGs commission these services, won’t NHS England simply say that there is no need for a national service? Perhaps that’s what they want: if a national service were to be commissioned, it would require new money, wouldn’t it?

The redoubtable Mrs Sharpe has said that PSNC has no idea whether a national minor ailments service will ever be commissioned. That is quite a revealing statement. It suggests that NHS England don’t simply have concerns about difficulties in negotiations for a service that both parties considered desirable, they actually have no interest in such a development and the matter is now closed.

Perhaps the new pharmacy minister, Alistair Burt, can knock a few heads together. He has already accepted that pharmacists can reduce the pressure on the workload faced by GPs. According to him: “It should be win-win all round. It should be about who is best at doing a particular role in the health service”. I think Mr Burt agrees with me – a pharmacy minor ailments scheme, quite simply, is a no-brainer.