Capacity Management System (CMS) is an integral product of the NHS Pathways CMS Programme. CMS is a suite of modules which consistently and clearly measures capacity and activity pressures in real time for urgent and emergency care services.

The data available through the Capacity Management System to hospitals, managers and the wider health economy can help to coordinate existing services and see where patient care can be accessed more easily.

Over the years CMS has developed and consists of two fundamental products:

• Directory of Services
• Capacity and Escalation Management

The Directory of Services is a central directory which can be populated by any primary care service. It gives access to real time information about clinical services in order to locate an available service with the right skills.

It can be populated with primary and secondary care services including, but not limited to, minor injury units, district nurses, urgent care centres and emergency dentists.

The clinical assessment within NHS Pathways gathers information that indicates the specific clinical skills needed by the individual patient. This information is used to perform a search on the directory to find a service local to the patient, which has all the clinical skills necessary to treat the patient within the time frame required.

The Directory of Services can be searched in two ways:

• Automatically via an assessment using NHS Pathways. After completing the clinical assessment progresses, a unique combination of codes identifies the clinical skills required and the timeframe within which they must be provided to the patient. This forms an electronic search string which returns results directly to the screen of the call handler.
• Manual Quick Search - This feature can be performed by a clinician independently of NHS Pathways. For example, if a district nurse is on a home visit and the patient requires additional care to what the nurse can provide, he/she can manually search the Directory of Services for a local service to further treat the patient. The nurse can enter the patient's age, gender and/or location and select the clinical skills they know the patient requires. This manual search will present all appropriate services available for the patient to access.

The manual search returns the same list of services as the automatic search would generate. It is one Directory of services accessible and used in two different ways.

 Visit the Directory of Services section for more information about its benefits.

Capacity and Escalation Management captures information from urgent and emergency care services in a variety of capacity modules. These modules then allow algorithmic calculations to be completed to provide a standardised view of capacity and escalation across a health economy.

With role based access control, once collated, this capacity and escalation information gives an overview of regional pressures to give a whole picture pertinent to the clinical need, as lots of local information is already available. The information is integral for managing escalation across areas and is essential data when managing significant or major incidents.

This information can also be integrated in to the Directory of Services, if required, to allow accurate referral of patients to services based on capacity and escalation pressures as well as clinical and demographic information.

Specific capacity modules to support acute and secondary care are:

• Access Points capacity module
• Acute Hospital Bed Status
• Community Bed Status
• Critical Care Status
• Mental Health Status
• Paediatric Status
• Perinatal Status
• 999 rerouting

(These modules are currently under review or development and may not be available yet)

For more information about the specific capacity modules see the CMS core narrative.

More information

If you have any further questions that have not been answered please visit the frequently asked questions.