Managing SIRS Notifications
Overview
The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) requires registered providers to notify the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) of serious incidents involving residents, within strict deadlines. Maica extends the incident record with SIRS fields so you have a structured, auditable place to manage each notification, track its deadline, and record the outcome. You still lodge the notification itself in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal; Maica is the record and the deadline tracker, not the submission channel.
This article explains the SIRS fields on an incident, the notification priorities and deadlines, and how to track a notification through to completion.
There is no direct connection from Maica to the ACQSC. SIRS notifications are lodged manually in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal, using the incident record in Maica as your source.
Flagging an incident as SIRS reportable
Whether an incident is reportable under SIRS requires clinical and contextual judgement, so Maica does not decide it for you. The incident manager ticks SIRS reportable on the incident once they have confirmed it meets the threshold. Ticking it reveals the SIRS compliance section on the incident, where the rest of the SIRS fields appear.
Until SIRS reportable is ticked, the SIRS fields stay hidden, which keeps ordinary incidents uncluttered. The flag must be set deliberately by the responsible person; it is never set automatically.
Notification priorities and deadlines
Every reportable incident is given a priority, which sets the deadline for notifying the ACQSC.
Priority 1
24 hours of the incident
Potential or actual serious harm, police involvement, or unexpected death
Priority 2
30 days of the incident
All other reportable incidents across the SIRS categories
When you set the priority, Maica calculates the notification due deadline automatically from the incident date and time. You also select the SIRS category that best describes the incident, from the eight reportable categories.
Where an incident involves potential criminal conduct, police attendance, or an unexpected death, a police report is also required, within the same 24-hour window as the ACQSC notification. Record this on the incident using the police report fields.
Tracking submission status
As you work through a notification, you record its progress and outcome on the incident, giving you a complete audit trail.
SIRS notification status
The stage of the notification: Pending, Submitted, Closed, or Withdrawn.
ACQSC reference number
The reference the portal gives you once you submit.
SIRS submitted date
The date you completed the portal submission.
Submitted by
The user who completed and recorded the submission.
Changes to the SIRS reportable flag and the notification status are history-tracked, so there is a tamper-evident record of how each notification progressed.
Maica calculates and shows the notification due date, but it does not send automated reminders as part of the package. Watching deadlines and acting on them is a process your organisation manages, so build the due date into your own monitoring routine.
SIRS reports and dashboard
Maica includes a packaged set of SIRS reports and a dashboard, found in the SIRS compliance reports folder. They are all based on incidents flagged as SIRS reportable and give you an operational view of your notifications, such as which are outstanding and which are approaching or past their deadline. The reports are editable, so you can adapt them to your own monitoring needs.
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