“A Pharmacy First sore throat service [will be] available from pharmacies across Northern Ireland (NI),” health minister Mike Nesbitt this week (November 6) announced.
The Department of Health (DH) revealed that the new service will be rolled out “starting December 1” as part of a “winter preparedness plan”.
It said that the service, open to everyone aged five and over, “will offer advice, clinical assessment and treatment for sore throats without having to wait for a GP appointment”.
Read more: Northern Ireland to launch raft of new services and ‘expand’ Pharmacy First
“This service was available from 43 pharmacies on a pilot basis last winter and was effective in helping to free up GP time and relieve pressures on other urgent care services,” it added.
Nesbitt said that “the planning process for winter gets underway in springtime to ensure that we can mitigate, as far as possible, the additional pressures that we know we will face”.
“For this winter, this includes measures to keep the population well in the community including the use of community pharmacy and measures to protect primary care, hospital care and social care,” he added.
Pharmacy First expansion
It comes after the NI DH unveiled plans in May for pharmacies to treat six new conditions, offer two new services and run various pilots in its community pharmacy strategic plan.
The new services are set to be introduced “in the period up to 2030” – “subject to securing the necessary funding”, it said at the time.
Read more: £5m retained margin uplift ‘approved’ in Northern Ireland
The government also laid out plans to add “sore throat, shingles, impetigo, sinusitis, earache and infected insect bite” to the country’s Pharmacy First service – increasing the number of common conditions treated by pharmacies from 13 to 19.
Meanwhile in April, the NI government announced that it would increase the margin retained by pharmacies by £5 million.
In England, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) this week revealed that more than a third of the public are still “unaware” of the Pharmacy First service launched in January.
