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 that represents every NHS hospital, community, mental health and ambulance trust in England 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.

Examples include:

• two announcements late last week on the use of face masks in hospitals and visiting policy
• the announcement of NHS Test and Trace on 27 May including the potential need to isolate whole teams of NHS staff with immediate effect
• a series of tactical announcements changing the approach to testing NHS staff and patients during April
• the original lockdown announcement of 23 March which contained instructions on which NHS staff should leave work immediately to go into isolation.

The call is made in a letter to the health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, which says 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.

As an example, detailed guidance on the use of facemasks in hospitals was promised in the announcement on 5 June but trusts only received this guidance on Friday 12 June despite being asked to commence implementation on Monday 15 June, in three days time. This is deeply frustrating.

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
• circulating any detailed guidance promptly to help ensure effective implementation within the expected deadline.
  
  

The chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, 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.”