Notice of collection

We're the national regulator of government-funded aged care services. As part of our work, we may need to collect your personal information.

There are laws related to:

when we can collect your personal information
how we collect your personal information
what we can use your personal information for
how we disclose your personal information.

Collecting information

We can collect personal information directly related to, or reasonably necessary for, one or more of our functions or activities.

These include:

reviewing, monitoring and accrediting aged care services
registering quality assessors
dealing with complaints about providers
responding to reportable incidents
communicating with relevant stakeholders
deciding on approvals for aged care providers

You can find a full list of our functions and activities in the:

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018 (the Commission Act)
Aged Care Act 1997

We collect your personal information mainly when you give it to us. This may be when you:

contact us to give feedback
speak to our assessors when they visit an aged care service
speak to an investigator
make a complaint about an aged care provider
notify us of a reportable incident
ask us for information or documents
apply for a job with us.

Depending on the situation, we may collect personal information from third parties.

Personal information also comes to us when:

we talk to aged care providers about their services
other organisations send it to us as part of our role.

Using information

We can use your personal information to perform our functions and activities. Common examples include:

dealing with complaints
responding to reportable incidents
assessing whether providers are complying with their obligations.

There may also be times when we collect information for one purpose but need to use it for another. For example, we collect information as part of a complaint but need it to assess a provider.

The Commission Act outlines permitted uses.

We sometimes use personal information to survey people about improving our services. Any companies that help us gather this information must meet relevant privacy laws.

Disclosing personal information

We won't disclose your personal information to any person or organisation unless:

you give us permission
the law authorises or requires us to
it meets another exception in the Australian Privacy Principles.

We'll keep your information confidential if you ask us to. The exception is if the confidentiality is, or is likely to, put any person's safety, health or wellbeing at risk.

We'll take all reasonable steps to notify you before we decide not to keep any information confidential.

In compliance with the Commission Act, we routinely disclose personal information with:

Department of Health and Aged Care
Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency
NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
police
State Coroners’ office.

Our Memorandums of Understanding outline how we share information with other agencies.

Overseas disclosure

We only disclose personal information overseas when:

overseas service providers assess our email traffic for malicious and harmful content
we send information overseas to the person the information is about or with their consent.

We'll take all reasonable steps to notify you in any other circumstances.