The importance of feedback
Feedback plays an important role in improving the quality and safety of care delivered by health, aged and community care service providers. It enables service providers to make things better for others.
Here are some things to think about when deciding whether to post feedback here, before, during or after a formal complaint process.
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Consumer rights
Patients, consumers, carers and families all have rights, including the right to raise issues about the care they have received.
This means that making a complaint doesn't have to be a negative thing but instead, is a way to make the decision-makers in an organisation know that something hasn't gone the way you feel it should.
Remember, if a service provider doesn't know there is a problem, they can't do anything about it.
There are many different ways to make a formal complaint. The first and best way is to tell the staff looking after you. You can also share it with the service provider's feedback team or go to a regulator or independent complaints organisation.
You can read about your rights at:
Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights (external site)
Charter of Aged Care Rights (external site)
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How is posting on Care Opinion different to making a formal complaint?
The table below summarises some of the differences between Care Opinion and making a formal complaint.
| Care Opinion | Formal complaint |
| Informal and online | Formal and usually on paper |
| Outside the organisation | Inside the organisation |
| You remain de-identified in the public domain and most of the time, anonymous to the service provider | You can remain anonymous and if you do, the service will not be able to respond to you. |
| Public: everyone can read it | Private: only you and the organisation can see it |
| You may not get a response | You should always get a response |
| Multiple organisations may respond | A single organisation responds |
| Story/response statistics are not monitored | Complaint statistics are monitored nationally |
| No power to force or change specific outcomes | May result in a clear action plan |
| Focus on learning and improvement | Focus on root cause not a fault or blame |
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Federal, State and Territory Complaints Organisations
Each State and Territory in Australia has a formal complaints organisation. Read more to find your State or Territory Complaints Organisation. Click to find your state or territory health complaints organisation (external site).
If you are worried a health practitioner's behaviour is placing people at risk, you might decide to report your concerns to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Click to read more about AHRPA (external site).
If you are receiving an aged care service and you have a concern or complaint that you have not been able to resolve by talking with your service provider, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (the Commission) can help you to resolve your concern or complaint. Click to read more about the Commission (external site).
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If you are planning to make a complaint or have an ongoing complaint about your care
If you are planning to make a complaint, or have already made a complaint, to a health or care service, there are a few things to think about before posting your story on Care Opinion.
- When you post on Care Opinion, you are likely to be identifiable to the staff who are looking into your complaint.
- Your story is highly likely to be responded to by the same person managing your formal complaint.
- Some people find it traumatic to make a complaint because they often need to repeat what happened multiple times.
To avoid having two different communications in progress with the same organisation at the same time (a formal complaint and informal online feedback), it is often better to wait until your complaint process is completed. Then you can decide whether you want to share feedback about your care, or the complaint process, on Care Opinion.
It's important to remember that you are allowed to have a support person with you when you make a complaint and in any meetings when you talk with your provider about your complaint.
If you want to go ahead, let our moderator know. Your story will then be moderated in line with our standard process.
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If a complaint about your care is completed
If your complaint process is completed, sharing your experience on Care Opinion will normally not cause you a problem.
If you have been unhappy with the complaint process, you may be planning to escalate your case to an independent complaints agency. If so, you should check whether posting on Care Opinion (or receiving a response from the care provider on Care Opinion) could cause a delay or prevent them from accepting your case.
If you want to go ahead, let our moderator know. Your story will then be moderated in line with our standard process.
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How does Care Opinion moderate a story about a formal complaint?
Care Opinion moderates stories about the experience of complaint just like other stories, in line with our moderation policy and values.
Where it is clear that a formal complaint is planned or is ongoing, or the story is very serious, we pause moderation and ask the author to consider the issues on this page. If the author confirms they wish to go ahead, we resume moderation of the story.
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Why does Care Opinion have this policy?
Care Opinion’s mission is for “people to be able to share their experiences of health and care in ways which are safe, simple, and lead to learning and change”. Experiences of health, aged and community care may include a wide range of experiences, such as clinical, administrative or relational experiences, and may also include the experience of a formal complaint process.
In principle, we believe that Care Opinion should publish both experiences of care which lead to complaints, and experiences of the complaints process itself. We believe wider public benefits follow from this policy.
For story authors: Research suggests that important motivations for authors posting care experiences online include “informing other patients” and “improving standards of care”. There is much evidence of authors achieving these goals when they post their feedback, but they can’t achieve them in relation to the complaints process if Care Opinion rejects feedback about that process.
For service providers and the wider system: It is acknowledged that there is much variation in the quality of provider complaint handling. Formal channels for feedback about complaints processes exist, and Care Opinion adds an informal channel alongside these, just as it does for care more generally.