While an extra 12 months will enable an additional 5% of bodies to get a digital system up and running, there will still be some that miss the extended target

Despite the deadline being extended by a year, a handful of NHS secondary-care trusts will still miss the March 2026 target for implementing an electronic patient record.

Led by the Department of Health and Social Care, the £2bn Frontline Digitisation programme is intended to ensure that all trusts across England have deployed an EPR system. The scheduled date for achieving this was originally set at March 2025 but, in 2023, this was pushed back by a year after “a number of NHS trusts” advised the DHSC they were “unlikely” to meet the target.

While the additional 12 months will drive EPR adoption across a total of 206 organisations from 91% to 96%, the remaining 4% – equating to eight trusts – will still fall short, according to a forecast made by secondary care minister Karin Smyth.

These trusts will, however, have “advanced in their plans for an EPR”, the minister added.

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“Through the Frontline Digitisation programme, we will work to level up National Health Service trusts to a baseline level of digital capability,” she said. “Our investment in digitising the frontline will ensure value for money and that health and care staff have access to health-related information when and where it is needed, supporting them to deliver care efficiently, effectively, and safely, thereby reducing variation and improving outcomes.”

The minister’s comments were made in response to a written parliamentary question from fellow Labour MP Samantha Niblett.

In recently released major project transparency documents, the DHSC said the £2bn tech programme is intended to deliver a “vision [of] a digitally-enabled health and care system, where the health service and its users have the digital services and access to the data they need to effectively manage and improve health and wellbeing”.

The department added: “The Frontline Digitisation programme is supporting this vision by levelling up ICSs (integrated care systems) and providers to a baseline level of digital capability, set out in our Digital Capability Framework, which enables frontline clinical and operational staff to make the best use of digital technology to deliver care efficiently, effectively and safely, reducing variations and improving quality and outcomes. The EPR programme is focussed on coverage, ensuring all trusts have an EPR, capability, ensuring that trusts with an EPR meet our standard, and convergence, making decisions about coverage and capability with the aim of having fewer more integrated EPRs serving larger populations.”