Aged Care Complaints Management: Timeframes and Compliance

Complaints management is one of the most operationally significant compliance obligations under the Aged Care Act 2024. The Act establishes clear requirements for how providers must receive, acknowledge, investigate, and resolve complaints — and it introduces protections for people who make complaints, including specific prohibitions on adverse action.

For providers, a well-designed complaints management system is not just a regulatory necessity — it is a key input to quality improvement. Complaints data reveals patterns, highlights systemic issues, and provides early warning signs that, if acted on, can prevent serious incidents and adverse assessment findings. Providers who treat complaints as a burden rather than an opportunity are missing one of the most valuable data sources available to them.

The Aged Care Act 2024 requires every registered provider to have a complaints management system that meets specific legislative criteria. The system must be accessible to consumers, their families, representatives, and staff. It must allow complaints to be made verbally, in writing, or through any other reasonable means. It must not impose barriers that discourage or prevent complaints from being made.

Providers must designate a person or role responsible for complaints management and ensure that all workers know how to receive and escalate complaints. The complaints process must be documented in the provider's policies and procedures and must be communicated to all consumers at the time of entry into care and on an ongoing basis.

The Act requires providers to deal with complaints 'as soon as practicable' (Rule 165-25). The ACQSC Better Practice Guide establishes two key benchmarks for meeting this obligation. First, providers should acknowledge receipt of a complaint within 5 business days. This acknowledgement should be in writing and should include information about the complaints process, expected timeframes for resolution, and information about how the complainant can escalate the complaint to the ACQSC if they are not satisfied.

Second, providers should aim to resolve complaints within 30 calendar days wherever possible. Complex complaints may take longer, but the provider must keep the complainant informed of progress and provide reasons for any delay. If a complaint cannot be resolved within 30 days, the provider should document why and set a revised timeframe.

While the 5-day and 30-day figures come from the ACQSC Better Practice Guide rather than the legislation itself, the ACQSC will review complaints management records during assessment contacts and will assess whether the provider is meeting these benchmarks. Consistent failure to acknowledge or resolve complaints within these recommended timeframes is a compliance risk.

One of the most significant provisions in the Aged Care Act 2024 is the prohibition on adverse action against people who make complaints. This means a provider must not take any action that disadvantages, discriminates against, or penalises a consumer, their family member, or a staff member because they made a complaint or raised a concern.

Adverse action includes reducing or changing care or services, making threats, intimidation, transferring or discharging a consumer, or taking disciplinary action against a staff member who raised a concern. The protections are broad and are designed to create a culture where people feel safe to speak up.

Providers must actively promote a culture that welcomes complaints and feedback. This means training staff to respond positively when complaints are received, ensuring that managers do not react defensively, and monitoring for any signs that consumers or staff are being discouraged from making complaints. The ACQSC takes adverse action allegations very seriously, and a substantiated finding can result in significant regulatory consequences.

If a complainant is not satisfied with the provider's response, they have the right to escalate their complaint to the ACQSC. The Commission has the power to investigate complaints, conduct site visits, require providers to take specific actions, and impose sanctions where complaints reveal systemic non-compliance.

Providers should view ACQSC escalation as a failure of their internal complaints process — not as an external nuisance. Every escalated complaint is an opportunity lost. By resolving complaints thoroughly and transparently at the provider level, you reduce the risk of regulatory intervention and demonstrate to the ACQSC that your complaints system is effective.

Your complaints management policy should include clear guidance on when and how to inform complainants of their right to escalate to the ACQSC. Withholding this information — or making it difficult to find — is itself a compliance risk.

Beyond individual complaint resolution, providers should analyse complaints data in aggregate to identify trends, systemic issues, and areas for improvement. This means categorising complaints by type, location, service area, and outcome, and reviewing the data at least quarterly.

Common complaint categories include: quality of care, food and nutrition, communication, staff behaviour, clinical care, medication management, personal care, and environment. If you see recurring complaints in the same category, that is a signal of a systemic issue that needs a systemic response — not just a series of individual resolutions.

Complaints trend data should feed into your continuous improvement plan and should be reported to your governing body as part of their oversight function. Under the governance obligations of the Aged Care Act 2024, the governing body is expected to have visibility of complaints data and to take action where patterns indicate quality or safety concerns.

Statura Care's complaints management tools enable you to log, track, and resolve complaints within a structured workflow that enforces the 5-day acknowledgement and 30-day resolution timeframes. Automated alerts notify your compliance team when deadlines are approaching, and the system captures all correspondence and investigation notes in a single auditable record.

Complaints data is automatically categorised and feeds into trend analysis dashboards, giving your governing body the oversight data they need. The platform also links complaints to related SIRS incidents and quality standards evidence, creating a complete picture of each issue. Learn more about how aged care compliance software from Statura Care supports end-to-end complaints management.