Trust appeals to NHSE chiefs over EPR funding fears

Speaking at a recent board meeting, Amy Freeman, University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust’s director of digital transformation, said it was first anticipated some of the national money may be available for its EPR programme, but now she understood there would instead be a focus on “infrastructure and backlog maintenance of IT”.

“There isn’t a bag of swag cash we can find to fund [our EPR]. We do need to do something as our current EPR contract ends in 2027. We need to come up with a plan,” she told the board.

The chancellor announced in March’s budget that the NHS had signed up to substantial productivity improvements in exchange for £3.4bn to upgrade “antiquated” tech over the course of the next parliament, including all trusts having an EPR by March 2026.

The funding was allocated in exchange for the NHS agreeing to new productivity targets of nearly 2 per cent and NHSE has hired former national NHS transformation director Tim Ferris to advise on how the billions should be spent.

Ms Freeman described some recent “guidance” that had come out and said: “We’re having to make a case to say actually we did our infrastructure work with the digitisation money we’ve had over the last two years and we have an EPR need.”

She referenced an article written in the Future Healthcare Journal last month, in which Dr Ferris described the NHS as “facing a crisis” and discussed the “managed convergence” policy he created while at NHSE, which encouraged NHS providers in integrated care systems to use the same tech systems.

Ms Freeman added: “Interestingly our business case exactly talks to that. I’ve written to him and to [NHSE system chief information officer] Sonia Patel to say we think we fit this criteria and if you want a system that is ready to move in this space then do get in touch and I await to hear.

“I think there could be some light on the horizon. And we’ll continue to push for any funding that’s available and put that to best use in our EPR programme.”

In a later comment to HSJ, the trust denied Ms Freeman had written a letter or referred to guidance in the board meeting.

Ms Freeman said: “UHNM is working with partners across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICS to procure an integrated EPR for acute, mental health, community, primary care and social care.” 

“The new integrated EPR will replace and consolidate our current numerous and siloed technology solutions to improve patient safety, quality, continuity of care, end-to-end pathway management, as well as better experiences for our staff and patients.

“We are currently undertaking soft market testing to assure ourselves that an EPR solution is available/achievable across all the care settings in scope.”