GP commissioners are keen to offload their minor ailments consultations but pharmacists may not have the capacity to take on the extra work, Proprietary Association of Great Britain director of health policy and public affairs Gopa Mitra has said.

GPs were fed up with spending their time on unnecessary consultations and had no financial incentive to continue with the work, Ms Mitra, who is also a member of the Self Care Forum, told attendees at an AAH hospitality day last week (April 26).

She said GPs would be happy for pharmacists to take on minor ailments work, but warned that they would need to consider whether they had time to assume the burden.

"The question is: are you able to pick up that workload? Because you're already spending 90 per cent of your time dealing with prescriptions" Gopa Mitra, PAGB

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"[Minor ailments consultations] are coming out of the GPs' per capitation fee so they're not getting any extra money and the incentive should be not to see as many people with minor ailments," Ms Mitra stressed. "I think it's a capacity issue as far as general practice is concerned." "The question is: are you able to pick up that workload? Because you're already spending 90 per cent of your time dealing with prescriptions," she warned.

NHS consultants Arden Commissioning Support managing director Rachel Pearce agreed that GPs would be open to using pharmacy. She said clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) had come up with "pretty radical ideas" to make the healthcare system more efficient and reported that reducing A&E attendance was a priority for many areas.

"Right across the community, A&E performance is reducing, and we're having discussions with CCGs about how to stop the flow of patients into A&E," Ms Pearce said. "They're spending money they just haven't got anymore so part of our work should be to look at other alternatives and potentially look at the use of community pharmacy, the voluntary sector or better GP out-of-hours provision."