NHS hospitals call for no more surprise announcements

NHS Providers has called on the government to commit to a set of protocols for all future announcements affecting the operations of NHS trusts.

The organisation says there has been a succession of announcements where frontline leaders have had no notice of, or input into, key decisions affecting their organisations, patients and staff. This includes two recent announcements on the use of face masks in hospitals and visiting policy, the 27 May NHS Test and Trace announcement including the potential need to isolate whole teams of NHS staff with immediate effect, and the original lockdown announcement of 23 March which contained instructions on which NHS staff should leave work immediately to go into isolation.

In a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, NHS Providers argue that trust leaders are rightly expected to ensure outstanding patient care, but they can only do this if they are involved in key decisions and have adequate notice of major changes affecting them.

The letter acknowledges that, in the early days of the pandemic, decisions and announcements had to be made at pace, but the NHS now needs to return to well established protocols including: consulting trust chief executives on the content of major changes and the details of announcements that they are expected to implemented; ensuring they have as much notice as possible of any announcement and a copy of any announcement as it is released publicly; giving them the information they need, as quickly as possible, so they can answer legitimate questions from staff, patients and local stakeholders; and circulating any detailed guidance promptly to help ensure effective implementation within the expected deadline.

Chris Hopson, NHS Providers chief executive, said: “Important decisions affecting the operations of NHS trusts should not come as a surprise to those expected to deliver them. Trust leaders have an important role to play in shaping and informing the way we confront coronavirus. But they need to be ‘in the loop’ so they can help ensure the best decisions are made and are then implemented effectively on the ground.

“Unfortunately there have been too many occasions where they’ve been caught unawares or haven’t had what they needed. For example it’s disappointing that, having raised the problem around face mask guidance last Friday, it’s taken a week for the guidance to arrive, just three days before trusts are required to make a complex and difficult operational change. That mustn’t happen again.”