What are our functions and activities?
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (Commission) is the national end-to-end regulator of Australian government funded aged care services. Our functions and activities include:
- protecting and enhancing the safety, health, well‑being and quality of life of aged care consumers
- regulating aged care services through accreditation, quality reviews and monitoring, and registering quality assessors
- responding to provider non-compliance with aged care responsibilities, taking compliance and enforcement action where appropriate
- dealing with complaints about aged care providers
- taking action in relation to compliance with the Code of Conduct for Aged Care (Code of Conduct)
- responding to reportable incidents under the Serious Incident Response Scheme
- engaging with consumers and their representatives, and providing education to aged care providers, consumers and their representatives, and the public
- deciding whether to grant approval to providers to deliver aged care
- reviewing and investigating the use of refundable deposits and the charging of fees, and assessing whether providers are financially sound to sustainably deliver quality services to consumers.
For more detail about our functions, click here to see the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018 (Commission Act). Click here to read our Privacy Policy.
Why are you receiving this notice of collection?
We have collected your personal information in exercising one of our functions or activities. We may have collected this information directly from you, or in some circumstances from a third party. Third parties we collect information from include aged care consumers and their representatives, aged care providers, aged care workers and external organisations (such as other government agencies).
This collection of your personal information is required or authorised by or under the Commission Act and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Rules 2018.
How do we collect personal information?
We collect personal information through a range of different channels, including when:
- people give us information over the phone, in person, by letter, email, through our website and social media, and via the My Aged Care Service Provider Portal
- we have conversations and conduct interviews when we visit aged care services or during investigations
- other organisations give personal information to us because it is relevant to our functions or activities.
How will your personal information be used?
We collect personal information so that we can protect and improve the safety, health, wellbeing and quality of life of people receiving Australian funded aged care. Your personal information will be used to undertake our functions and activities to achieve this purpose.
We use personal information for the purpose of collection, such as to deal with a complaint or assess an aged care provider’s compliance with its obligations. Sometimes we will use personal information for different purpose, where this is permitted under the Commission Act and the Australian Privacy Principles. For example, we may use personal information collected in a complaint process to inform a performance assessment of an aged care provider against the Aged Care Quality Standards, or to assess whether there has been non-compliance with the Code of Conduct.
Sometimes we use personal information to survey people about how we can improve our services, and to get information about their experiences and needs. We may engage other companies to contact people to gather this information. We, and the companies we use, must meet privacy laws which restrict how we collect, store and use the information you give us.
When could your personal information be disclosed?
Your personal information won't be disclosed to any other person or organisation unless:
- you give us permission; or
- it's authorised or required by law; or
- it meets one of the other exceptions in the Australian Privacy Principles.
Organisations we routinely disclose personal information to include the Department of Health and Aged Care, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, State Coroners’ offices and the police. This is done in compliance with parts of the Commission Act that allow us to disclose information in certain circumstances. We have Memorandums of Understanding setting out our information sharing arrangements with other agencies, which are available on our website. For more information click here.
If you ask us to keep your personal information confidential, we will do so unless that will, or is likely to, place the safety, health or well-being of any person at risk. We will take all reasonable steps to notify you before we decide to not keep your personal information confidential.
Overseas use and disclosure of personal information
We do not usually use or disclose personal information overseas, except in limited circumstances:
- Email traffic may be assessed by overseas service providers for malicious and harmful content, to mitigate security risks.
- We may send personal information offshore to the person the information is about or with the consent of the individual concerned.
If we intend to disclose personal information to an offshore recipient in other circumstances, we will take reasonable steps to notify you.
More information
We comply with the Privacy Act 1998 and Australian Privacy Principles in handling personal information. Our privacy policy contains detailed information about the types of personal information we collect and when we collect it, how we use and disclose personal information, and the steps we take to keep it safe.
If you have questions or concerns about how we handle personal information, you can read our privacy policy, you can contact us via our website, call us on 1800 951 822 or email us.