We moderate stories from Monday to Friday between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, with the exception of national and state (Queensland) public holidays and with reduced hours during the Christmas to New Year holiday break.
We do our very best to have stories moderated and processed within 3-5 business days.
These are the stages of the moderation process.
Stage 1: Receipt of story
When a storyteller submits their story to the Care Opinion platform, the story comes through to our moderation queue. The storyteller receives an email letting them know that we have received it and it will be processed during business hours.
Stories are held in the moderation queue pending assessment and moderation against the Care Opinion Moderation Principles. This is the critical step in the storytelling process to ensure that the storyteller and any staff mentioned critically are not identifiable and stories are constructive and able to be responded to.
Each story is assessed in the order in which they are received, with the exception of stories needing urgent action as identified in our daily queue scan.
Stage 2: Moderation
Minor edits are made to the story as required and in accordance with our Moderation Policy with tags then added to the story.
At this point, we may need to contact the storyteller to clarify aspects of the story or to make sure we link it to the right service(s). So we ask storytellers to please keep an eye on their inbox (including spam folder) in the first few business days after they submitted the story.
Sometimes we may also have to contact the service provider about some things, such as what the first name of a staff member named (in a positive context) in the story is (so we can keep their name in) or if they know what area of their service may have provided the care.
We are extremely careful to keep the story in the storyteller's own words as much as possible. It is important to us that it is their voice that is heard, not ours and that can take a little time.
Stage 3: Publication
If a story has met our moderation principles and it has been moderated, it is published straight away unless it is very serious. When it is published, the storyteller will receive another email letting them know that the story has been published and giving them a link to access their story.
Service providers partnered with Care Opinion
The service who provided the care will automatically receive an email from us with a link to the story and an invitation to respond to it.
Service providers not partnered with Care Opinion
We endeavour to contact the service who provided the care to tell them about the story and invite them to respond to it via the contact details listed on their website.
Very serious stories
When stories are very serious, we contact the service provider before we publish the story. We give them a copy of the de-identified, moderated story and offer them five to seven business days to formulate their response before we publish the story.
We do this so that staff have the opportunity to discuss the story, try to understand what may have contributed to it occurring, what steps can be taken to prevent it happening again and how to write a genuine and considered response to the storyteller’s concerns.
We also email the story to advise this is happening and that there will be a delay in the publication of their story.
Stage 4: Response
Service providers partnered with Care Opinion
When a service provider chooses to partner with Care Opinion, they are committing to respond to stories shared on the platform about them. They have given us the names and emails of staff members who need to receive emails alerting them to stories about their service on the platform so an authorised person can respond to them.
When they respond, their response comes through to the Care Opinion team for moderation before it is published.
Service providers not partnered with Care Opinion
If a service provider has not partnered with Care Opinion, we do not have the contact details of any specific staff members to send the story to. Instead, we contact the service provider via the contact details listed on their website.
Some services may be willing to respond to stories on Care Opinion but some services choose not to, preferring instead that consumers contact them directly rather than going through a third-party organisation like Care Opinion. For this reason, we cannot guarantee that all storytellers will receive a response to their story.
If they choose to respond, we publish the response on the Care Opinion website on their behalf.
The storyteller
When a storyteller receives a response to their story, they receive a third email from us, letting them know that their story has had a response. They can view the response online, which appears underneath their story. This too is moderated against our moderation policy prior to being published. They can mark the response as being helpful or unhelpful and can post their own response if they wish.
All service providers are offered support and guidance to respond to stories, however, Care Opinion is not able to control how, when or if they choose to respond to stories published on the site.