A detailed look at managing reportable incidents in the new portal, including submitting and managing reports, tailored questions, third-party reporting, unauthorised restrictive practices, providing additional information, responding to requests for information, and preparing for the transition.
Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon.
My name is Laura Sham. I'm the Deputy Commissioner for Data and Regulatory Transformation here at the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.
Today we're going to give you a look at the new provider portal and some of the improvements that you're going to see, particularly in the reportable incident space, ahead of the portal's launch later this year.
Before we begin, I'd like to commence by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of the landbon which we meet all across Australia today.
For me, I'm coming to you from the lands of the Ngunnawal people in Canberra, and I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all people with lived experience of disability and those who provide support to them.
Okay, a few housekeeping matters to start us off. Closed captions are available in Teams today, and we also have our wonderful Auslan interpreters who are joining us today.
The session is being recorded, and to protect your privacy, we have disabled the chat and the Q&A functions just for the purposes of the recording.
If you have any feedback or questions from the session today, we'd still love to hear from you, and you can email those to the DART mailbox, which is included on the slide that you can see on the screen right now.
As the Commission continues to build out the new provider portal, we're creating a simpler, more connected way for providers to engage with us and, importantly, to meet their regulatory obligations.
The new portal will bring together key functions and services into a single platform, helping providers to manage their interactions with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission more efficiently and to reduce the need to navigate across multiple systems.
The provider portal is a key part of the Commission's broader digital transformation program, and it's designed to improve the user experience through more intuitive navigation, streamlined processes, smarter forms, and greater visibility of activities and submissions.
While the technology and user experience are changing, providers' obligations and the Commission's regulatory role remain the same.
In today's session, we will focus specifically on reportable incidents, and it provides an opportunity to see how this important functionality is being delivered through the new portal.
You'll also gain an understanding of the new reporting experience and the enhancements being introduced and, importantly, how these changes are designed to support a more efficient and effective incident management and reporting process.
Before I pass to our subject matter expert Jo Bonney to lead through this topic, I will take a moment to show you an introductory video, which will give you a first look at how reportable incidents will look in the new portal. This is a first look, and the video will also be uploaded to our Provider Toolkit in the coming weeks.
Okay, so now we're going to dive into more of the detail through each of those processes that was shown in the video.
To take us through this detail, I am delighted to welcome Jo Bonney, who is our excellent reportable incident subject matter expert. Jo's played such a key role in shaping these enhancements, and will share practical insights and also guidance to help you prepare for and get ready for the new provider portal. Thank you, Jo.
Thanks so much, Laura.
That was a beautiful welcome. Thank you. And hi, everybody. My name is Jo Bonney and I'm one of the subject matter experts working on the reportable incident submission form. As Laura has mentioned, I'll be talking about some of the improvements that we will introduce to our system when you are submitting reportable incidents.
And I'd also really like to take this opportunity to provide you with some helpful tips about how you can best prepare yourselves and your teams for the transition.
Earlier this year, we held a series of sessions with providers to ask you about your experiences of the reportable incident process and the changes that you would most like to see. You told us that the current process was time-consuming and that you needed to complete many questions, many that are not relevant to the circumstances of the incident. We heard your concerns, considered your feedback, and we have captured your ideas.
We have built the system with efficiencies for you in mind, and we have streamlined the reporting process. We are now asking better questions that relate to the circumstances of the incident, and will be providing you with better information, support and guidance throughout the reporting process.
A new request for information form will enable you to receive, locate and respond to new requests directly from the portal. We have also included a new additional information button for you to tell us about updates and provide more information after the 5-day report has been submitted.
We've made changes to the way that we use the mandatory fields. We ask the information that we will need during the reporting process to reduce the number of requests for additional information that we will send out to you.
We have introduced more checkboxes and pick lists to reduce the time that submitting your reports will take, by reducing the need for you to add large amounts of free text. In many circumstances, you can select more than one checkbox to accurately capture the detail of the incident and the actions that you may have already taken.
In circumstances where you have taken appropriate action to respond to an incident, you have the information that is required, and you can confirm that there are no outstanding risks to the participant or others, you can proceed directly to complete the questions from the 5-day form. You'll be asked two questions, and if the answers that you provide do not identify any risk, then the additional questions will self-populate for you.
When you are reporting the use of an unauthorised restrictive practice to the Commission, our current system forces you to submit the 24-hour report first. We are really pleased to advise that, moving forward, our new smart form will identify URP reports and automatically enable you to submit only the 5-day report.
Our streamlined reporting starts from the moment you select the report type. Whether you are telling us about an incident relating to another registered provider, or an incident that has occurred while delivering your own NDIS supports and services, our new smart form will guide you to the questions that relate to the circumstances of your incident.
If you are telling us about an incident that has occurred during the provision of your own supports and services, we will use the information that you have already provided to us about your participants and your workers to enable you to search for and select the right person, details each time you submit a report.
You will be asked tailored questions relating to the safety of the participant, the immediate actions that have been taken in response to the incident, and anything that you may have already done to mitigate the risk of the incident occurring again.
As you progress through the form, additional questions will be asked to capture more information about the responses that you provide to us. For example, if you tell us that the police were notified about an incident, only then will we ask you further questions about the police notification. We will ask you questions like who contacted the police, if there is an ongoing investigation, the police event number if you know it, and the name of the police officer and the station that the incident was reported to.
Other actions that you have taken will also populate additional questioning. If you tell us that an ambulance has been called, that the participant attended a hospital, an internal or external investigation is underway, or a staff member has been suspended or dismissed, then we will also ask you additional questions about these circumstances.
Lastly, we've changed the way that we ask about the death of a participant. Our questions enable you to tell us more specifically about the circumstances that led to the participant's passing, and we can identify if the death was expected or not. We've built a new section for you to tell us about other health conditions, lifestyle risks, hospital attendances, and individual circumstances that may or may not have been associated with the participant's death.
Let's take a look at the manage reportable incidents view. On this page, you'll be able to find the reportable incidents that you have already submitted to the Commission. Here you can review and search for your reportable incidents. You will be presented with a list of reports that you can identify by case number, submission status, participant name, primary category, date of the incident, and who has notified us.
On this same page, next to the all reportable incidents label, you will see an arrow that will take you to a list view. You can use this to filter your reports. You might choose to look at your reports by status of open and closed, or by 24-hour and 5-day report submission. You might select only the recently viewed matters, or you can even produce a list of your overdue reports.
We've also made available a list of your URPs so that you can better manage these. This filter can also be used to identify third-party reports that you might have submitted to us previously.
Next to the reportable incidents tab, we have included a tab to locate and manage your draft reports. A URL is provided to take the user directly to the draft report, and the created date is recorded to assist you to better identify the draft report that you are looking for.
Remember that only the notifier can view their own draft reports. And please remember that the Commission doesn't have any oversight of your drafts. You will need to formally submit them for us to be able to see them.
The third tab, located next to the draft tab, identifies your requests for information. Here you can select an RFI number to take you directly to the request on the case, but we'll have a bit of a look at those shortly.
After you've selected the create reportable incident button, you'll be taken to the before you start screen. This screen will guide you to everything you need to know prior to starting your reportable incident. The NDIS Commission will require certain information in order to review and assess your report. Please always provide as much information as possible in relation to the reportable incident and answer the questions carefully. We expect that it should take you about 5 to 10 minutes to complete the form, and of course that does depend on the nature of the incident and the detail that you might need to provide to us.
The getting started page provides helpful information about what a reportable incident is, when to use the form, the timeframes, how the form works, and what you will need to tell us.
As a registered NDIS provider, you must still use an incident management system to record all of the incidents that do occur during your service provision. And you should always submit a reportable incident to the NDIS Commission when a or is alleged to have happened. This includes the incidents that have been recorded on and responded to within your own incident management system.
The requirements for submitting reportable incidents have not changed, and you are still required to submit most reports within 24 hours of the key personnel being notified of the incident. You still have five business days to submit the remaining information on your report, and reports about the use of an unauthorised restrictive practice continue to be reportable within 5 days.
The getting started page also provides a definition for each of the reportable incident categories. We encourage you to review this information carefully to avoid incorrect reporting. Where an incident may cross over two or more categories, you'll be guided to select the category that has had the most significant impact on the participant.
Where an incident also includes the use of a URP, then you will be required to submit a form for the URP separately.
This information and other helpful tips will also be available to you in our reportable incidents guidance material, which you will be able to access from our website and which will be released just prior to the system going live.
Let's have a look at third-party reporting. As you scroll to the bottom of the before you start screen, you will see a question asking about the is in connection with. By selecting the second option, another registered provider's supports and services, you'll be taken to what we call our third-party report, where you can tell us about an incident or an alleged incident that has occurred in connection with another registered provider's NDIS supports and services.
The third-party report has been designed to be quick and easy for you to complete. We have reduced the number of mandatory fields that we ask you to complete, as we acknowledge that you may not always have all of this information available to you. We will ask you 12 questions that relate directly to the people involved and the circumstances of the incident. Of course, we will also want to know if the participant is currently safe, and any action that you may be aware of that has already been taken by yourselves or another party to ensure the participant's safety.
We will need you to provide as much information as possible on your third- party report. Any information at all that would assist us to identify the correct provider, the correct participant, and any other people involved will be helpful.
As we review your information, we will assess the information that you have provided to take further action as appropriate with the responsible provider. And we will always reach out to you if we do need to clarify any of the information further or we have more questions.
By reporting the third-party report directly to the portal, you will no longer need to send us lengthy emails about incidents occurring with registered providers. However, if your information is about an unregistered provider, you can still submit a complaint via our website.
Introducing our brand new subcategory and cause lists.
We have introduced a new way to report the details about an incident by providing pick lists for subcategories and causes. When you select the appropriate category, you'll be able to choose from the relevant subcategory and cause lists. You can only select one primary category, but you can select more than one subcategory and associated cause if needed.
Please ensure that you select the primary category that has had the most significant impact on the participant, and remember to always report any uses of a URP separately.
As demonstrated on screen, the selections are dynamic and populated based on your choices. If we have a look at the two examples on screen: in the first one, the provider has selected the primary category of abuse. By selecting abuse, the subcategories will automatically appear that relate to that category. So those are decision making and coercion, financial or property abuse, physical abuse, psychological and emotional abuse, and threats.
In this example on screen, the provider has selected the threats option. By doing that, the associated cause list will automatically appear. So the causes could be a threat of harm to the participant, to others, to pets, property, reputation, safety, or supports and services.
Again, the provider can select multiple subcategories and multiple causes. In the screenshot that you can see currently, this is an example of a provider who has selected the primary category of serious injury. You can see that by doing that, a number of different subcategories have automatically appeared, and in this case the provider has selected the subcategory of choking and breathing. By doing that, they are then presented with some causes that are associated with the subcategory of choking and breathing. So these are whether it be caused by food and drink, incorrectly prepared food and drink, near drowning, an object which is not a food item, strangulation and suffocation.
The list is designed to be logical and flow. However, to support you further, we have provided a complete list in our guidance materials that you can use for reference.
We've also included the use of an other selection, and when you select other, you will be able to add free text to best capture the nature of the incident if a suitable option is not available to you.
This is where we've made some of our most exciting changes, and we have made significant changes to the way that you can submit your reportable incident. So, after you've completed the mandatory questions for your 24-hour report, you'll be asked two additional questions. As you can see on screen, those questions are: are you ready to complete the rest of your incident assessment, and are there any outstanding risks to the participants or others?
So if you already have the information required to complete your report, you have taken appropriate action, and you can confirm that there are no outstanding risks to the participant or others, then the 5-day assessment questions will auto-populate for you.
You can proceed to complete your report and submit your 5-day report at this time. If, however, you're not ready to proceed with the 5-day report, that's okay. You can still submit the 24-hour report and continue to take the necessary actions to respond to the incident. You can locate the 24-hour report in the manage reportable incidents view that we looked at earlier, and you will still have five business days to submit the remaining detail of the report.
When you do submit your report, whether it be at the 24-hour or 5-day stage, you will receive an on-screen acknowledgement with a reference number that you can use to manage and track the status of your request. Please note, however, if you have saved your report as a draft, you will not receive this reference number. You will receive a URL that, when selected, will return you to your report, and upon submission you will then receive the reference number.
Reporting the use of URPs looks different also. We've identified some of your more frequently asked questions about reporting the uses of URPs, and with these in mind, we've built in helpful tips and links to the practice guides on our website. You'll be able to locate information relating to high-risk practices, surveillance technology, safe transportation, one-on-one and two-on-one supervision and supports, and the implementation of restrictive practices that might have an impact on others.
Our new form will guide you through the use of a URP. You still have 5 days to report the use of the URP. And now you can also tell us about any other uses within that 5-day period on the same form. We have tailored the questions for better URP reporting.
As with all of our forms, the information that you tell us will guide the questions that you are asked. We will ask you better questions about the administration of chemical restraint and the circumstances of the use of all URPs.
We are pleased to confirm that you will no longer need to submit a 24-hour report when you are reporting the use of an unauthorised restrictive practice. Our new smart form will take you directly to a single submission form when you have selected the primary category of URP. You will still be required to report the use of a URP within five business days.
An officer of the NDIS Commission will review your URP report, and if it is assessed to be suitable for weekly reporting, you will receive an email notification with the directions to proceed with reporting. The assessing officer will enable the reporting function for you to attach the reporting spreadsheets, and you should continue reporting in this manner until the URP is included on a behaviour support plan and authorised as per the state or territory requirements. The information that you provide us on the URP can be linked directly to the behaviour support plan and will be used to assist with monthly reporting.
To explain that further: when the behaviour support provider lodges a behaviour support plan for the participant, they will be able to link the URP to the BSP, assuming that the details remain the same.
I'm just going to pause, as we seem to have lost our interpreters.
Thanks for pausing. Lee sent me a message saying that she's on and she's interpreting. I couldn't see her. I'm not sure if that was on my end, but I assume you can't see Lee as well currently. Lee, maybe try having your camera on and off.
Can see you now. Thank you.
When the BSP is lodged, you'll receive a notification. Once obtained, you can upload the evidence of authorisation for the restrictive practice and commence the monthly reporting.
Once the restrictive practice is in a behaviour support plan and authorised, you should then only report any use of the restrictive practice against the behaviour support plan under monthly reporting.
While the practice is authorised and it is used in accordance with the behaviour support plan and any authorisation conditions, the use is no longer a URP, and no further reportable incidents in relation to this restrictive practice are needed.
You can provide more detail to us in a couple of different ways. As we saw in our example for the subcategory and cause list, many of our pick lists will provide the opportunity to select other.
At any stage of the form that you select the option of other, a text box will become available for you to add the relevant detail. You can add up to 255 characters in this free text box, and it will be mandatory for you to add the relevant detail before you can move on to the next page of the form. And while we have provided the other fields to assist you with your reporting, we do ask that, wherever possible, you use the selections on the pick lists that have been provided.
We've also provided you with better information to support you when attaching documents to your reports. You'll be able to add attachments to third-party reports, reportable incidents, additional information submissions, and in the response to requests for information.
We will provide you with a list of documents that might be applicable to your reportable incident type. Some of these types of documents include correspondence relating to the management of the incident. There might be medical records that we would require, care plans, incident reports, et cetera. In some cases, we will require particular documents from you, and we will ask for those directly. They will include things like risk assessments, end of life plans, palliative care plans, and other day-to-day care plans.
We will always ask for documentation that provides evidence of safeguarding. We ask also that you carefully consider the naming of your attached files, and we have provided you with some support to ensure that we are able to easily identify the file types. We've increased the maximum file size, and the limit is now sitting at just under 100 megabytes per file, and we can accept a wide range of file formats.
Keeping us updated.
We have two significant changes that we've introduced here.
The first is that we have added a new add additional information button to your reportable incidents, which will automatically appear after you have completed the submission of the 5-day report.
You'll be able to return to your report at any time, even if it has been finalised, and you will always be able to provide us with new or updated information. When selecting the add additional information button, you'll receive a form that will provide you with some space to tell us about the new information, and you can add any relevant or required attachments to this same form.
Our team will be advised that new information has been added to your report, and we will contact you if we have any questions or if we do require further information. You will always be able to return to the reportable incident to review the information that you have provided to us.
The second change we've made is the way that we request additional information from you. We will now send you an email to alert you to a new request for information, or RFI, which you will be able to view and respond to directly on the portal. reportable incident screen or from the reportable incident case itself.
A form with our request, providing you with detail of the information that we are looking for and a due date, will be available to you, and you can use the form to provide your response.
We've provided you with ample space to add free text, and you can attach documents as applicable. When you have that information ready and you press submit, we will receive a notification that you've completed your response and that it is ready for our review.
Okay, let's move on to some of the things that you can be doing now to get yourselves and your teams ready for the transition.
Firstly, we recommend that you take some time prior to the transition date to review any of the draft reports that you have in the existing portal, and work towards submitting these as applicable. Your draft reports will not migrate across to the new portal, and we don't want you to need to duplicate your efforts by needing to recreate a report.
Secondly, if you have submitted any 24-hour reports and you are ready to submit the 5-day reports, we recommend that you do so. While you will be able to continue with your reporting in the new system, we do acknowledge that for many providers, you would likely have a preference to complete the report that you have started in the single system.
Access to the system, you will notice, does look a bit different, and we have introduced a change to the roles that you are assigned when submitting reportable incidents.
Currently, as you would know, you can assign two roles to your officers: one of those being the notifier, and the other one being the approver role. Moving forward, we will have a single role to be assigned to the applicable officers that you select.
So now would be a really good time to start thinking about your team members and who you feel are best placed to prepare and submit your reportable incidents.
Our new smart forms will provide lookup functions for the information that you have already told us about your workers, your participants, and your registration groups. Please ensure that this information is reviewed regularly and kept up to date to ensure a smooth experience when submitting reportable incidents.
If you are unable to locate a record relating to a worker or a participant, you can save the report as a draft, update the information accordingly in the portal, and return to complete your report.
Lastly, preparing your team. The new report will look and feel different.
While it is efficient and easy to use, we recommend that you familiarise yourselves and your teams with the screens and guidance material early. Prior to release, you will find a reportable incident guide on our website, and we encourage you to review this, as it will provide you with definitions, how-tos, and some helpful tips.
So to finish off, let's have a quick look at the highlights.
Number one, better management. You will be able to identify the reports that you have submitted and easily information that we have sent you. You'll be able to see the stage that each report or request is at, and identify when the reportable incidents team have completed their review. Of course, the Commission may still continue to take further action or require further information even after the reportable incident review is completed.
The second one, to the right of the screen: we'll be using the information you have already supplied to us to pre-populate the names and contact details of your workers and participants. You'll not need to enter these details each time you submit a report to us, but you will need to keep them up to date.
Third one, our smart forms. We received feedback from many providers that the questions didn't always relate to the details of the incident, and mandatory fields needed to be completed even when they were not applicable. Our new smart form uses conditional logic, so that you will be asked the questions that relate to the circumstances that you are telling us about.
Number four, reduced need for follow-up requests. By increasing the number of mandatory we are wanting to assist you to provide the information that we will need the first time. Therefore, we're wanting to help you to reduce the number of requests for information that we need to send.
Number five, reduction of free text. We've introduced more checkboxes and pick lists so that you can tell us about your incident more efficiently and without the need to provide us with copious amounts of free text. But if you do still need to tell us more detail, or if you don't feel that the form has captured the specifics of the incident, that's okay, opportunities for you to add free text as you need.
Number six, draft reports. We do understand that sometimes an incident may appear reportable in the first instance; however, as you understand the circumstances, it may no longer be reportable. Sometimes you may have been super proactive and started a report that you then determine isn't reportable. You are able to save your progress as a draft at any time within the browsing session. We've introduced an automatic function to delete your report after 30 days, which we do hope will help you to unblock some of those unused reports.
Number seven, URP reporting. Our current reporting system requires the submission of a 24-hour URP report prior to submitting the 5-day report. As we all know, submitted at 5 days.
So to provide a better and more efficient way to tell us about uses of a URP, we have now ensured that when you are telling us about the use of a URP, you will only need to submit a single 5-day report.
And lastly, our third-party reporting. We have introduced the new third-party report, whereby you can tell us about incidents that you know to have occurred with another registered provider. The form is designed to be easy for you to complete, consists of 12 quick questions, and, as we know, you may not always have a lot of information, fields.
We encourage you to submit your third-party allegations via the portal, and we will avoid the need for you to send us an email. Of course, as we mentioned before, if the provider that you are telling us about isn't registered, then you can still lodge a complaint via our website.
And that concludes our first look at the new portal and the system for reporting incidents into the future. Thank you so much for joining me today. And please remember that you can always refer back to our recording of this session on our website.
Laura, I'm now going to hand back to you.
Thank you, Jo. Appreciate that wonderful overview.
Before we close today's session, I'd just like to take a few minutes to highlight the resources that will support your transition to the new provider portal. The Provider Toolkit is available on our website. This will be the central hub of information, guidance and support materials as we move towards our go-live. You'll find a range of resources there to help you to understand the new portal and also to prepare for the changes ahead.
The portal preview video that we showed you earlier in the session is already available on the website under the Provider Toolkit, along with a fact sheet and an Easy Read resource that will provide a high-level overview of the new experience. Over the coming weeks, we'll continue to expand the toolkit with additional resources.
Sorry, I think my connection just dropped out. One moment.
We can hear you.
You can still hear me?
Okay, thank you. I'll keep going then, and hopefully we might get things back online. I'm not sure what's happened with my connection.
Laura, would you like me to finish off for you?
Is that now working? Can you hear me?
We can hear you.
Okay. Sorry, Jo, if you wouldn't mind.
I'm just having some connection issues — it's dropping in and out with the screen, so I'm not sure how much you're hearing of me.
So if you wouldn't mind finishing off, that would be wonderful.
Absolutely, no problems.
As Laura was mentioning, the Provider Toolkit is available, and if you would like to receive a copy of that, you're most welcome to email through to our team and we can be sure that you are linked into those resources.
There will be a number of step-by-step guides that are available on the website. I've made reference to some of those during my presentation also.
So please have a look at those — they'll be a really helpful tool for you to find your way through the new form, but also some of the other streams and the changes that are happening there in the portal.
Also, the reportable incidents webinar is the first of a series of webinars that we are running. So if you're working for an organisation that is providing behaviour support, or you've got an interest in the registration space, please jump in to some of the other webinars as well, as we'll be able to provide you some more helpful information.
And as always, the webinars will be available for you to view from our website, and you're welcome to contact us with any questions or comments following those.
There's going to be a help channel available for providers prior to go-live, and you'll be able to get information about that, again, on our website. And the email address that we're about to pop up on screen will also help and provide more information as you require it.
Next screen, please. Thank you.
So once again, please jump into our website and have a look at the resources that we currently have available. They will continue to build between now and prior to the release. If you have any questions or comments following today's session, or at any time at all, please do not hesitate to contact us on our email address, which you can see on screen: nqsc.dartprogram@ndiscommission.gov.au.
Thank you so much everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate your time, and we look forward to rolling out this new system with you all.
Thanks again. Bye-bye.