All registered providers have incident management requirements.
There are different levels of incidents with different reporting requirements.
Incidents
Incidents are acts, omissions, events or circumstances that caused, or could reasonably have been expected to have caused, harm to a person receiving care or another person. The way you manage incidents must be focused on the safety, health and wellbeing of the older person.
You must manage all known, alleged or suspected incidents that are connected to the care you deliver.
Reportable incidents
Some incidents are reportable. You have extra requirements to notify us when these incidents happen. The time limit for making the notification depends on the impact and type of the incident. Reportable incidents fall under the Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS).
The 8 types of reportable incidents for funded aged care services are:
- unreasonable use of force
- unlawful sexual contact or inappropriate sexual conduct
- psychological or emotional abuse
- unexpected death
- stealing or financial coercion by a staff member
- neglect
- inappropriate use of restrictive practices
- unexplained absence during delivery of care and services.
Learn more about reportable incidents including definitions and examples of these incident types in the Serious Incident Response Scheme – Guidelines for residential aged care providers resource.
3Gi. Incident management
Providers are responsible for how their organisation responds to all incidents, whether they are reportable incidents or not.
When there’s an incident you must:
- assess and provide support to respond
- involve the relevant people
- use an open disclosure process.
You’re also responsible for preventing incidents and learning from any incidents. This will help stop similar incidents from happening again and reduce their harm.
Assessing incidents
When an incident happens, you must assess whether it’s a reportable incident.
You must assess the incident to decide what response you need to make. You must also assess who needs to be involved in resolving the incident, and who you need to be notify. This may include the person affected by the incident and their carer or representative.
Responding to incidents
Your response to the incident must make sure the person, or people, affected are safe, healthy and well. This means you must take all the actions you need to resolve and improve the situation.
You must involve all the relevant people. If it’s a reportable incident, you must make the correct notifications. This includes notifying a police officer within 24 hours of being alerted to the incident if there are reasonable grounds to alert the police.
Learning from incidents
You must collect and review data about incidents to monitor how effective your organisation is at managing and resolving risks. You must consider:
- whether incidents could have been prevented and what actions are needed to prevent them from happening again
- how you can stop incidents from causing more harm.
It’s important to do this because it allows your organisation to keep improving how it manages risks. This continuous improvement is a provider requirement.
Using an incident management system
You’re responsible for creating and keeping an effective incident management system (IMS). This helps to manage risks, keep improving, and deliver quality care.
You must be able to give IMS records to us if we ask. You also must document your IMS procedures.
Preventing incidents
You must have processes in place to prevent incidents from happening. This means you must have effective risk management systems and practices.
Learn more about incident management in:
- Effective incident management systems: Best practice guidance – overview of information for providers on best practice management systems, with downloadable guidance
- Incident Management Systems – overview of the incident management systems and key links.
3Gii. Serious Incident Response Scheme
The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) holds providers responsible for preventing and managing serious incidents. It includes a provider’s notification requirements and time limits for notification when a reportable incident happens.
The SIRS promotes a safer aged care system. It makes sure providers take responsibility for preventing and resolving serious incidents and keep improving their quality of care.
Providers must notify us when a reportable incident happens. You must submit this notification through the Department’s My Aged Care provider portal, using the SIRS notification webform. You also must manage the incident through your IMS.
You must notify all reportable incidents in either a Priority 1 or 2 timeframe. You must decide the priority of the reportable incident and report it to us in:
- 24 hours of becoming aware (for Priority 1)
- 30 days of becoming aware (for Priority 2).
| Priority | Incident types |
|---|---|
| Priority 1 |
Priority 1 incidents include all reportable incidents under incident type:
Plus, reportable incidents in other categories:
|
| Priority 2 | Priority 2 incidents are all other reportable incidents (where harm is caused to the person receiving care services) that aren't a Priority 1. |
Learn more about managing and reporting incidents under the SIRS in:
- Serious Incident Response Scheme – Guidelines for residential aged care providers – detailed guidelines about SIRS responses for residential aged care providers
- Serious Incident Response Scheme – Guidelines for providers of home services – link to downloadable copy of the detailed SIRS response in home services document
- The Serious Incident Response Scheme landing page – overview of SIRS with key links
- SIRS decision support tool – interactive tool that can help you to identify an incident’s priority level, use as a supplement to the guidelines
- Effective incident management systems: best practice guidance – link to downloadable copy of the detailed SIRS best practice guidance for providers
- SIRS provider resources landing page – key links to relevant SIRS resources, based on the services you deliver.