NHSE cancels £69m eBCMS programme to fund more EPRs

NHS England confirmed that it has cancelled a £69 million investment programme for electronic bed capacity management systems (eBCMS) to put additional funds into electronic patient records (EPRs).

In 2023, NHSE’s transformation unit earmarked the funds to put eBCMS into some of the worst performing trusts on A&E waits and transfers in a bid to alleviate waiting lists and delays to patient transfers and discharge from hospitals.

However, NHSE has confirmed that the budget has been subsumed into the efforts to give all NHS trusts an EPR by March 2026, a target which is on track.

An NHSE spokesperson said: “After initial exploratory work, eBCMS was not rolled out nationally and the NHS instead prioritised supporting all trusts to reach a core level of digitisation and put electronic patient record systems in place, which increasingly offer bed and capacity management functionality.

“NHS England is investing £1.9 billion to support every NHS trust to either have an EPR or be in the process of implementing an EPR by March 2026.”

The money was re-allocated at the end of 2024 and a blueprint on eBCMS was created for trusts which still want to implement a standalone system.

The initial cohort of trusts that were set to receive the money for an eBCMS included Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, Hull University Teaching Hospitals, and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, according to HSJ.

A spokesperson for University Hospitals Plymouth told Digital Health News: “The trust currently has an in house-built system for bed occupancy and capacity management along with third party systems with interoperability with the in-house built system for portering and cleaning requests.

“We have been optimising our current systems to provide the range of technology needed to meet the eBCMS specification and provide the related benefits where possible.

“We recognise the importance of having a well optimised eBCMS and are working closely with our system partners to introduce a new shared electronic patient record to further the work already done.

“The Devon wide Epic EPR has its own eBCMS which will have significant benefits to managing patient flow when the system goes live next year.”

UHP and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust both signed a contract with Epic for an EPR in January 2025, as part of a shared vision to implement a single EPR across Devon under the One Devon EPR programme.

The investment in eBCMS was modelled on a blueprint provided by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which developed a model, based on a command centre that oversees bed management, patient flow and real time location tracking of patients to enable it to track manage patient flow across admissions, discharge and transfers.