A complaint has been made about me

If we receive a complaint about you, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and tell you the complaint details – unless doing that is going to put someone at risk.

We’ll notify the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), because Councils and the HCCC regulate registered practitioners together and the HCCC assesses every complaint.

We also notify the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) – the national body that manages practitioner registration – when we receive a complaint. 

What happens next depends on who manages the complaint and what it relates to. When a Council is managing your complaint, we assess each case individually because every situation is different. Councils don’t always take regulatory action, and when they do, their objective is to protect the public rather than punish you.

Here’s a helpful guide to the different steps in the process for practitioners.

We’ll ask you to respond to the complaint in writing as part of the initial assessment. That won’t limit you from giving us more information during the process. You can send us information and material you think is relevant at any time. 

We’ll also look at whether we’ve received any previous complaints about you and what the outcome was.

Councils will consider your response to the complaint, whether the incident was serious and if it’s likely to happen again. They’ll review your reflection on what happened, and any steps you’ve taken since the incident to prevent similar issues. 

If the relevant Council thinks the complaint raises an urgent public safety issue, they may convene a hearing to address the matter and may ask you to attend. 

They may agree that no immediate action is needed. In that case the HCCC will continue assessing the complaint and will aim to do that within 60 days.

If the Council decides immediate action is needed to protect the public or act in the public interest, they may suspend or restrict your registration while the HCCC looks into the complaint.

After the assessment, the HCCC and the relevant Council agree on who will manage the complaint. This could mean:

• discontinuing the complaint if there is not enough information or no grounds to progress it 
• the HCCC working with you and the complainant to resolve the concern together
• the HCCC deciding to conduct an investigation
• the Council managing the complaint 

We will let you know when we make that decision.

The HCCC generally manages the most serious complaints – it has the power to investigate and prosecute practitioners. Councils focus on helping practitioners to deliver safe and ethical care. Council hearings and meetings are not held in public.

Regardless of who is managing the complaint, the HCCC, Councils and the HPCA continue to share information with each other. You might receive communication from both the HCCC and your Health Professional Council during the process.

When Councils handle a complaint, they’ll decide whether it relates to your performance, conduct, health – or a combination. Each of these areas has a different pathway for managing the complaint, each with its own process. 

At any stage during the process, Councils can decide to take no further action and close the complaint if they think the issue has been addressed. Equally, they can use their immediate action powers to intervene at any time if new information comes to light. They can also refer the issue back to the HCCC.

The HCCC investigates all serious professional misconduct complaints, such as sexual misconduct. 

Depending on the investigation outcome, it can decide to prosecute these and other matters in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT). NCAT hearings are public and the outcomes are published on the NSW Caselaw website.open_in_new

The HCCC can also prosecute matters before a Professional Standards Committee (PSC). 

PSCs are decision-making panels that generally consider unsatisfactory conduct complaints - these are a type of conduct breach different to professional misconduct.

PSCs only deal with complaints about nurses, midwives and medical practitioners and their hearings are also public.

Both NCAT and PSCs can reprimand and/or impose conditions on a practitioner’s registration but only NCAT can suspend or cancel their registration.

Read more about how the HCCC investigates complaintsopen_in_new and prosecutes complaintsopen_in_new on the Commission’s website.

Visit our Public hearings page 

Complaints can take quite a few months to manage. It isn’t possible to give an average timeframe because there are so many factors that can affect the process. 

When you respond quickly to meet our deadlines with the right information it speeds things up. It’s also part of your professional obligation. Please tell us if you change your home/practice address or contact details.

We will treat you with respect.

We will manage your complaint as quickly as we can while taking a thorough approach.

We will tell you if your Council or the HCCC is managing the complaint and who to contact for information.

We will keep you informed of any steps during the process and advise you of the outcome.

We will answer your questions about the complaint process and what’s involved.

We will protect your confidential information and only share details that are necessary for us to carry out our role.

Contact us for help

We ask you to:

• treat us with respect

• comply with any orders 

• meet our requests for information, such as your employment details or a log of your continuing professional development activities

• attend assessments, interviews, hearings, panels and other meetings required as part of the complaints process.

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