Telephone announcements encouraging common cold self-management reduce demand for general practice appointments.

This study has demonstrated that the use of telephone announcements signposting appropriate patients with the common cold in the direction of community pharmacy or self-management reduces calls to reception. This strongly infers that the telephone announcements reduce demand for general practice appointments and is supported by the reduced mean waiting time to the third available routine appointment. Implementation of this intervention could help general practitioners reduce seasonal demand in their own practices.