Bureaucrat Louise Macleod has been appointed Aged Care Complaints Commissioner.
Louise has more than 20 years’ experience in a number of senior executive roles in several Commonwealth agencies.
Prior to joining the regulator, she held senior positions in the Office of the National Data Commissioner and the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
Before this, Louise was responsible for Complaints Management and Education and leading the Defence Abuse Response program within the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
In an Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission webinar about Complaints handling, Louise said her role has four main elements:
- ensuring providers have “really good processes in place” to receive and handle complaints,
- engaging with providers to ensure they have strong internal complaints processes,
- working with older Australians, their families, and carers to ensure that they feel empowered to raise concerns, and
- to educate providers, older Australians, their families, and carers about the work of the Commission to deliver complaints resolution processes “that are transparent, efficient, consumer focused and that afford natural justice for providers”.
She said good complaints handling requires “staff who genuinely care about delivering the best service possible... supported by management who are curious and who welcome complaints and feedback and take ownership for fixing problems as soon as they arise.
“They apologise when things go wrong, which is sometimes unavoidable and they learn from that experience.”
The SOURCE: With David Tune’s Independent Capability Review of the regulator pointing to serious problems within the complaints system, Louise has a big job ahead of her.
