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Working across the NHS system in the North East and Cumbria, NECS was tasked with developing and delivering an at-scale approach to support efficiencies around over the counter prescribing.
This included raising awareness with patients and the public around the costs of prescribing medicines that are routinely available for the patient to buy from pharmacies and other outlets, such as paracetamol and hay fever medication.
The marketing team needed to work across the region to create an innovative and memorable campaign. The team also needed to plan wider communications and stakeholder handling around the scheme in order to manage the reputation of the CCGs.
Following research, a suite of communications materials was produced and distributed to GP practices, walk-in centres, A&E departments and pharmacies for prescribers who wanted to use it to help with the discussion during interaction with patients to promote self-care.
The approach was supported by proactive communications through the media, information on CCG websites and social media. Media statements were produced and sent to all media outlets across the health and care system,
The My Medicines My Health website www.mymedicinesmyhealth.org.uk was created for stakeholders to access. NECS hosted all campaign creative, blogs, useful information and creative for stakeholders to access on this website.
The overall cost of the campaign so far is under £30k (July 2020) which has included: print, design, mailing house distributing marketing collateral and briefings to over 45,000 stakeholders, website and social media development, radio work and advertising in Primary Times (a magazine for families distributed via schools). It also includes refreshed artwork for 2020 and print of the new materials.
The campaign has been running since 2017 and during a 12 month period made savings of over £1m across the region. As the campaign continues to run, savings are consistently being made helping redirect money to other urgent healthcare needs.
The social media campaign was well received, with several other regions requesting the campaign artwork to promote similar messages within their area.
In March 2018 NHS England released recommendations from a national consultation and on conditions for which over the counter items should not be routinely prescribed. The findings mirrored the local evidence and research that we had gathered – the region was ahead of the curve and had already made significant savings prior to the recommendations being released.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/otc-consutlation-report-of-findings.pdf
The campaign artwork was refreshed in 2020 to incorporate illustrations by Tom Percival: http://tom-percival.com/
