The NHS can spend as much as £569 million in a year prescribing medicines that can be bought from high street pharmacies, supermarkets and even petrol stations. These are called over the counter medicines and are generally used to treat minor and common illnesses and conditions.
By spending less money on treating conditions that will get better by themselves, or can be easily treated by you, at home, we will have more money to spend on maintaining the services we have and investing in new ones.
Every £1million saved on prescriptions for over the counter treatments could pay for:
more community nurses OR
more hip replacements OR
more drug treatment courses for breast cancer OR
more drug treatment courses for Alzheimer’s OR
more GP appointments
(excluding admin and practice staff time)