Accessible Information Standard

The Accessible Information Standard aims to ensure that people who have a disability or sensory impairment receive information that can be accessible and understood. Any organisation that provides NHS or adult social care will need to implement these standards and compliance with the accessible information standard SCCI1605 (set out in section 250 the Health and Social Care Act).

By 31 July 2016 GP practices must be fully compliant with all aspects of the standards.

Commissioning organisations, whilst not required to implement the standards themselves, must support compliance by organisations from which they commission services. The guidance sets out that this could be done by, for example, incentivisation and performance management arrangements. Non-compliant organisations are advised that they lay themselves open to risk of complaints and investigation.

The standard requires organisations to:

Ask people if they have any information or communication needs, and find out how to meet those needs.
Record those needs clearly.
Highlight or flag the person’s file or notes so that it is clear that they have the information or communications needs.
Share people’s information and communication needs with other providers of NHS and adult social care, when they have consent to do so.
Take steps to ensure that people receive information which they can access and understand, and receive communication support if they need it.

Practices do not need to trawl retrospectively through the notes to identify patient needs, but do need to start identifying now how the notes should be marked to identify patient need or what the patient should be asked. This should include obtaining consent for sharing this information with other services, when a new patient registers or opportunistically when they contact the practice. Issues around staff training also need to be addressed, as the processes that practices adopt will likely be checked at Care Quality Commission visits.

Further information is available in the BMA document ‘Focus on the Accessible Information Standard for GP practices in England’ as well as FAQs.

Last updated : 21 Jun 2016

Superfast broadband vouchers worth up to £3000 are available. (11 Sep 2015)

The government’s superfast broadband connection vouchers are still available to small and medium sized businesses in 22 super connected cities across the UK. London is one of the 22 super...

Don’t let your NMC registration lapse – important information for nurses and practice managers. (11 Sep 2015)

From November 2015 anyone who allows their registration to lapse will need to make an application for readmission to regain access to the registrar. This could take between two...

Updated Subject Access Requests (SARs) guidance from the BMA (11 Sep 2015)

The BMA has issued guidance Focus on’ guidance on Subject Access Requests (SARs) for insurance purposes. The guidance has been updated following the Information Commissioner’s Office input and includes...

Training and development events for GPs and practice staff (11 Sep 2015)

Reflective Practice Masterclass (10 October 2015, 13 November 2015 and 4 December 2015) – Each master class helps individuals to identify both the organisational and psychological barriers to change and...

Increased savings on magazine subscription packages with DLT Magazines (11 Sep 2015)

DLT are the UK’s leading supplier of magazine subscription packages to businesses. Offering permanent discounts of up to 70% off cover prices and a range of over 150 leading titles,...

Egg-free flu vaccine Optaflu now available (11 Sep 2015)

MASTA, one of the Buying Group’s approved flu vaccine suppliers for the 2015-16 season, is now carrying stocks of the egg-free flu vaccine Optaflu. This can be delivered out with...

Retired Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) indicators update (11 Sep 2015)

Following concerns highlighted by practices in relation to the request from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to extract data related to retired QOF indicators, the BMA’s General...

Friends and Family Test - act now to avoid a breach notice (11 Sep 2015)

We are aware that there may be some confusion about the data required for the Friends and Family Test (FFT). NHS England data on the monthly returns show that many...

Warning for practices over PBX phone systems (11 Sep 2015)

There are reports that some businesses have recently been victims of PBX (Private Branch Exchanges) fraud where a hacker accessed their phone lines and made premium rate calls at a...