The implementation of the Accessible Information Standards in 2016 by NHS England enforces all organisations that provide NHS or adult social care to follow this standard by law. This standard aims to ensure that services must ask about an individual’s communication needs and find out how best to meet them, professionals must then record people’s needs in a set way.
Once this information is known then health and social care service provisions must highlight a person’s needs and clearly explain how they can be met.
The information on a person’s communication needs must then be shared where consent/permission is given or in a person’s best interests where they lack capacity to consent for this decision. Finally, health and social care services must make sure that people get information in an accessible way and offer additional support if and when a person needs it.
The reasonable adjustment digital flag (RADF) is a visible marker on an individual’s patient record. With the RADF it is possible to identify a person’s condition, any significant impairments they have and to identify, record, flag and share the reasonable adjustments needed to support their care. Providing reasonable adjustments improves both the quality of care and experience of care. The Information Standard has approved the digital flag across all health and publicly funded social care. For people with a learning disability and autistic people, this will have a significant impact in reducing their health inequalities. The RADF is part of the NHS Spine.
Professionals, and administrative staff can view, create, add, or remove information from the Flag. This can be done using the National Care Records Service (NCRS), with appropriate Smartcard access. Only certain patient systems have this functionality currently. Work will be done to include more systems, but organisations are expected to record RADF in their own way until then, using current systems and/or paper records.