Reasonable adjustments flag to be consistent across all care settings

A new standard for the Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag (RADF) has been introduced by the NHS to improve how healthcare professionals record and share information about patients who require reasonable adjustments.

Community pharmacies already provide reasonable adjustments and can already view RADF information through their National Care Records Service (NCRS).

The NHS is now enabling this information to be recorded and shared consistently across all care settings, which means staff in other healthcare settings will see the same information as pharmacies.

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This will make RADF information easier to find; it will be more consistent across NHS services; communication between providers will be smoother; and duplication will be reduced for both patients and staff.

The RADF is a shared NHS record held in the NHS Spine. It lets authorised staff record and view key information about a patient’s needs such as:

• Communication support;
• Help for people with learning disabilities;
• Sensory impairment adjustments;
• Other disability-related needs.

A cross-sector NHS communication indicated that by 30 September 2026, healthcare providers should be able to read, write and share RADF with other NHS providers.

All pharmacy owners already meet these requirements through their NCRS access and do not require any additional IT systems.

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Pharmacists still have a duty to make an assessment of a patient, under the Equality Act 2010, to determine if a reasonable adjustment is necessary and if so, what that reasonable adjustment is.

The RADF is a useful indicator that another healthcare professional has determined that a reasonable adjustment was necessary for the patient during their assessment and care for the patient.

However,  pharmacy teams are not expected to record every possible adjustment, check the NCRS portal for every patient, replace normal assessment with the RADF or rely on RADF information as a mandate for action.

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‘The RADF supports your work — it should not increase burden or replace your professional decision-making,’ Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said in a statement.

For more information, pharmacy staff can consult the NHS ‘How to use the NHS RADF in NCRS guide’ and the ‘RADF e-learning’ programme.