Nottingham Hospitals declares critical incident after EPR go-live

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has declared a critical incident following the go-live of its electronic patient record (EPR), because of sustained pressures across the trust.

In a statement, the trust said that the impact of the pressures was caused by a prolonged period of sustained demand, challenges around staffing, flow and discharge in the organisation, resulting in significant waits in the Queen’s Medical Centre Emergency Department (ED) and admissions to wards.

It added that issues with the technical roll out of its Nervecentre EPR, which took place last weekend, had “added to the ability to manage the current levels of pressure”.

Paul Volkaerts, chief executive at Nervecentre, told Digital Health News: “Following a period of planned downtime over the weekend to migrate services to the new EPR, users experienced slow performance during the day on Monday and Tuesday.

“Combined with a prolonged period of operational pressures the trust rightly decided to declare a critical incident.

“Nervecentre have been working closely with our partners at Nottingham University Hospitals to resolve the issues and ensure patient care is prioritised.

“System performance has been stable at expected levels since 5pm Tuesday, and we will continue to monitor closely.”

There were 24 ambulances waiting outside ED and large numbers of people in the department when the incident was called at 4pm on 4 November 2025.

Andrew Hall, chief operating officer at Nottingham University Hospitals, said: “Our staff are working tirelessly to care for patients, but the pressure on our services is causing very long waits and this is causing overcrowding in our ED.

“We know how frustrating this will be to people waiting in the department. Our staff are working as hard as they possibly can to get to them as soon as possible.”

The trust is asking members of the public and patients to carefully consider whether or not they need to attend ED, only attending in an emergency. Patients with planned appointments have been told to continue unless told otherwise.

“Unfortunately, some of our colleagues have experienced abuse from people waiting to be treated and we ask that they are treated with kindness and respect.

“The public can help us by only attending ED in an emergency and carefully considering other options, such as calling NHS111, speaking to a GP and visiting a local pharmacy,” Hall added.

Nottingham University Hospitals first announced that it had chosen Nervecentre as its preferred supplier in February 2024, after a competitive procurement process on the Health Systems Support Framework Agreement.

Meanwhile, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust will also go live with an EPR system from Nervecentre this month, as part of a joint EPR programme with York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which will commence the go-live of its EPR in February 2026.