Understanding the differences between Incident Reports and Progress Notes
Following an incident, there’s more to it than completing a routine end-of-shift progress letter. Incident notes are an important part of your incident management system and must be handled differently.
Even though incident reports may be filled up with progress notes, there’s a need to capture certain information and detail in them. It is critical that they be kept in a predetermined spot that is simple to find and access.
In addition to reportable incidents, you'll need to file a separate report via PRODA to the NDIS. Generally, you'll have 24 hours to do this for reportable situations. However, for some incidents, it may take up to five working days. According to the NDIS, the Authorised Reportable Incidents Approvers (ARIA) and Authorised Reportable Incidents Notifiers (ARIN) should be in place and control these procedures.
Why use an Incident Management System?
Your support staff will be able to take precise, thorough notes if they have access to an existing NDIS incident report form. Without it, they may overlook critical facts such as who was present or the contact information of witnesses.
There is likelihood to forget to document certain information and details especially if incidents are infrequent. This is especially likely to happen following a traumatic event that must be reported to the NDIS. A fit-for-purpose system, on the other hand, will assist workers in structuring the report and ensuring that all needed information is included.
The most crucial aspect of all is that staff members should be able to access the document that describes your incident reporting procedure in detail. Centro QMS’s incident reporting feature is integrated into the web-app so employees can access it all from the one system anytime, anywhere.
The best way to report an NDIS incident
Support staff should have no trouble creating a NDIS incident report using systems such as Centro QMS. But they should also keep the following advice in mind:
When possible, use language that is objective.
Utilise measurable data, or statistics, wherever feasible.
Be brief, concise and matter of fact.
Instead of saying "the participant was helped to their feet," use the active voice to make the person doing the action the subject of the sentence.
Use the participant's own words wherever feasible when retelling what they said.
As an additional resource, you may wish to download and distribute the NDIS' six-step incident response manual for staff members.
Streamlining Incident Reports to improve care quality
Reports of incidents are far too significant to be left to chance. Your team will be able to consistently write concise, well-written, and comprehensive reports by using a systematic approach to them.
As a result, you will be able to assure higher levels of care quality and safety, as well as more precise record-keeping and better audit preparedness.
Centro ASSIST
If you’d like a bit of guidance on how to manage your incidents reporting using our web-app, our team at Centro ASSIST would love to help.
We’ve helped multiple businesses across Australia transform their organisational compliance, we can help you to do the same. Simply, get in touch.
Other resources
