Care Opinion and formal complaints

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.

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)

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. 

If you are planning to make a complaint or have an ongoing complaint about your care

Care Opinion will review your story in moderation, but it is likely Care Opinion would not be able to publish it. If submitting a story that is part of an ongoing complaint it is important to note that:

• When you post a story on Care Opinion, you are likely to be identifiable to the staff who are/were looking into your complaint. On Care Opinion story authors should be anonymous. This may be a reason we cannot publish your story.
• Care Opinion will not be able to publish your story if the staff being criticised are recognisable to their colleagues, or the wider general public. This is made more likely if you have already made a complaint because services will be able to triangulate the information.
• If you have a complaint in progress, you will not receive a detailed response through Care Opinion. That should come instead through the complaint process. It’s difficult for providers to respond on Care Opinion when there has been a complaint in the same way they would with anonymous stories.
• To avoid having two different communications in progress with the same organisation at the same time (a formal complaint and informal online feedback). Care Opinion will not review your story until you tell us the complaints process is completed.

If a complaint about your care is completed

If your complaint is completed, we will review your story about that care and if we think there is a low risk of you (and/or the patient) and staff being identifiable, we may be able to publish your story.

This will usually only be possible if the complaint was about procedural or environmental issues. Complaints against specific staff members would mean the service could identify you and the staff involved.

This means in a lot of cases Care Opinion will still not be able to publish your story.

Sharing a story about the complaints process

If you have made a formal complaint and would like to share a story about that process, rather than about the care experience itself, Care Opinion can review this. In some cases we can publish stories about the complaints process.

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 and 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 Care Opinion is a way to hear experiences of care that services and the public would otherwise not hear. Not every person feels comfortable raising a formal complaint and may wish to share anonymously instead. Alternatively, people may have criticisms about their care that they want the service to hear and respond to, but they are not “serious” enough for the author to engage in a lengthy complaints process.

For story authors: research from the NIHR Inquire UK study (Oxford University) 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 story on Care Opinion. A formal complaint on the other hand is a way to focus on service accountability and responsibility. Care Opinion believes both of these processes are important.

For health/care 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 may add an informal channel alongside these, just as it does for care more generally.

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).