A cross-party group of MPs and peers has called for a national self-care strategy to ensure more appropriate use of NHS resources.

“We all know A&E services should be reserved for life-threatening emergencies, yet 3.7 million people a year are using A&E for issues that people could treat ... with advice from a pharmacist,” says Bob Blackman, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health.

“Combined with around 52 million visits to GPs each year for self-treatable conditions, this inappropriate use of services has cost the NHS more than £10 billion over the last five years.

“Equally, we all know that the health information on the internet is often either alarming or conflicting. This has made it much more challenging for people to differentiate a selftreatable condition from more serious symptoms, and the rise in demand for GP and A&E services is being partly fuelled by this.”

The report’s recommendations include:

• Clear information for consumers about the normal duration of symptoms and appropriate referrals for selftreatable conditions. This information, including red flags, should be embedded into the algorithms for NHS 111 and on clinical systems such as EMIS, in order that people receive consistent information from the NHS
• NHS Choices to develop a knowledge bank of information about conditions, symptoms and treatments to and used across the NHS
• A switch in the NHS funding model away from reward being based solely on ‘care and repair’ activities to one based on incentives and rewards for driving positive health outcomes and improved prevention
• The introduction of health education as a compulsory part of the PHSE curriculum, inspected by Ofsted, from the age of five to 18 years.