Other considerations

Guidance

Medicines adherence may be a problem for some people with medicines that require frequent dosing or longer treatment duration (for example, antibiotics). See the NICE guideline on medicines adherence.

Respiratory tract infections, including acute sore throat, are a common reason for consultations in primary care, and therefore are a common reason for potential antibiotic prescribing. In a 2011 survey of UK primary care (Gulliford et al. 2014), consultations for 'sore throat' accounted for 27% of all consultations for respiratory tract infections, and the median practice issued an antibiotic prescription for 60% of these.
There is potential for resource savings if a no antibiotic or a back-up antibiotic prescription strategy is used. One open-label RCT (de la Poza Abad et al. 2016) found significantly lower rates of antibiotic collection in the delayed collection prescription group (26.0%, p<0.001) and patient-led back-up prescription group (34.7%, p<0.001) compared with the immediate prescription group (89.1%, low quality evidence).
Recommended antibiotics are all available as generic formulations, see the Drug Tariff for costs.