Reporting a concern about a colleague is one of the hardest calls in a care setting — and for registered practitioners and their employers, it's sometimes a legal duty, not a choice. Here's what triggers a mandatory notification, who has to make one, and how to keep the record straight.
The Accorda Team · 6 September 2026
Most of the time, a concern about a colleague is something you manage quietly and well — a conversation, a bit of support, a note to keep an eye on things. But every so often a concern is serious enough that Australian law takes the decision out of your hands. For registered health practitioners and the people who employ them, reporting it to Ahpra stops being a judgement call and becomes a legal obligation.
That's what a mandatory notification is. And because it only comes up rarely, it's easy for a practice to reach the moment unprepared — unsure whether the threshold is met, who's supposed to report, and how quickly. The good news is that the rules are clearer than they feel in the heat of the moment. Once you understand what triggers the duty and what doesn't, the anxiety settles into something you can actually manage.
This is a plain-English guide for practice owners, managers and compliance leads across allied health, dental, nursing and the broader care sector. It is general information, not legal advice — and near the end we'll say plainly where you should get proper advice before you act.
Under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law — the scheme that governs registered health practitioners across Australia — certain people are legally required to report a practitioner to Ahpra (the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) when specific serious concerns arise. The purpose isn't to punish; it's to protect the public from a real risk of harm.
It helps to separate two things that often get blurred:
A voluntary notification can be made by anyone — a patient, a family member, a colleague — about any concern.
A mandatory notification is a legal duty that falls on a defined group of people, in a defined set of circumstances.
This article is about the second kind — the one you can't opt out of once its conditions are met.
The National Law defines "notifiable conduct" narrowly. It isn't every mistake, every complaint, or every difficult colleague. It's four specific things, quoted here from Ahpra's own wording. Notifiable conduct is when a practitioner has:
practised the profession while intoxicated by alcohol or drugs;
engaged in sexual misconduct in connection with the practice of their profession;
placed the public at risk of substantial harm because they have an impairment (a physical or mental health condition that detracts from their capacity to practise safely); or
placed the public at risk of harm by practising in a way that constitutes a significant departure from accepted professional standards.
Two of those deserve a note. An impairment is not the same as simply having a health condition — plenty of practitioners manage health conditions and practise perfectly safely. The trigger is where the condition is placing the public at substantial risk of harm. And a significant departure from standards means conduct that is serious — not slight or moderate — and that would be obvious to any reasonable practitioner in the field.
Mandatory reporting isn't about a colleague who's having a hard week, or one whose paperwork you'd do differently. It's a narrow set of serious risks to the public — and knowing the boundary is what stops good practices over-reporting and under-reporting.
The duty to make a mandatory notification falls on four groups:
treating practitioners — a registered practitioner providing a health service to another practitioner;
non-treating practitioners — a registered practitioner who becomes aware of a concern about a colleague outside a treatment relationship;
employers of registered health practitioners; and
education providers, for concerns about students.
It's the employer obligation that catches practices out. If you employ registered practitioners, your practice can carry its own legal duty to notify — and it doesn't disappear because you've handled the matter internally. Ahpra is explicit that the obligation can still apply "even if other steps like performance management were taken or the person has left." Managing someone out the door is not a substitute for a notification where the conduct is notifiable.
And the consequence of getting this wrong is real. In Ahpra's words: "If you fail to make a mandatory notification about notifiable conduct, Ahpra has a legal obligation to advise your state or territory health minister." For a practice owner, that's a compelling reason to make sure the obligation is understood before the situation arises — not worked out afterwards.
You don't have to launch an investigation or prove anything to a legal standard before you notify. The test is whether you have formed a reasonable belief that notifiable conduct has occurred.
A reasonable belief rests on direct knowledge or information from a reliable source — something more solid than a hunch. Ahpra is clear that "speculation, rumours, gossip or innuendo are not enough." So the threshold sits sensibly in the middle: you don't need certainty, but you do need a genuine, grounded basis for the concern.
That's reassuring in both directions. It means you're not obliged to report every piece of corridor talk — and it means that when you do have a real, well-founded concern, the law expects you to act on it rather than wait for absolute proof.
There's one important nuance. If you are treating another practitioner as your patient, the threshold for notifying is deliberately higher. The scheme is designed this way so that practitioners feel able to seek health treatment without fear that any visit to a doctor or psychologist will automatically trigger a report. The precise wording and some state-by-state differences (Western Australia, in particular, treats this differently) are worth reading carefully in Ahpra's guidelines if this situation applies to you.
For most practice owners and managers, the obligation you'll encounter is the employer one — and there, the ordinary thresholds above apply.
If the duty is triggered, a notification should be made "as soon as practicable" — Ahpra gives that phrase its ordinary meaning of feasible or possible. In other words, promptly. This is why the timing of what you knew and when matters so much, which we'll come back to.
Notifications can be made:
through Ahpra's online portal at ahpra.gov.au;
by phone on 1300 361 041; or
by contacting Ahpra directly to lodge the concern.
The law also protects people who notify in good faith — a notification made honestly and reasonably attracts protection from civil, criminal and administrative liability, and it isn't treated as a breach of professional etiquette or ethics.
The failures here are rarely about bad intent. They're almost always about two things: knowledge and evidence.
The knowledge gap is simple — the obligation is rare, so people don't know it exists until they're standing in it. A practitioner assumes "someone senior will deal with it." A manager assumes performance-managing the person is enough. Nobody's certain whether the practice, as an employer, has to act.
The evidence gap is quieter but just as costly. When a concern surfaces — sometimes months later — the questions that follow are always about the timeline: When did you first know? What did you do? When did you decide whether to notify, and why? If that history lives in a few half-remembered conversations and a deleted text thread, you can't answer it. And "as soon as practicable" is, by definition, a question about timing you may one day need to prove.
Let's be honest about the boundary first. Accorda does not make the notification to Ahpra for you, and it does not decide whether the threshold is met. That judgement is yours, and it's exactly the kind of decision where you should get advice from your professional indemnity insurer, a medical defence organisation or a lawyer before you act. No software should tell you a colleague has engaged in notifiable conduct.
What Accorda does is the part around that decision — the governance and the evidence:
A notifiable-conduct policy with staff sign-offs. Your obligations, and your team's, written down in plain English and acknowledged by every practitioner and manager — so the duty isn't a surprise when it matters. This is the single biggest defence against a missed notification: people knowing the obligation exists.
Incident reporting and triage. When a concern is raised internally, it becomes a dated, structured record — not a hallway conversation. Who raised it, when, what was assessed, and what was decided about escalating or notifying.
Tamper-evident records integrity. Because the whole question is often when did you know and what did you do, Accorda's records carry a trail you can stand behind — showing the timeline wasn't tidied up after the fact.
A credentials and licence register. Keep every practitioner's Ahpra registration status and renewal date in one place, so you always know who's currently registered and can act on it.
One-click audit evidence packs. If a regulator or a health complaints body ever asks how a concern was handled, you can produce the record in minutes rather than reconstructing it from memory.
The line we hold is simple: you and your advisers make the call; Accorda makes sure you knew the duty existed, captured the concern properly, and can prove you acted in time.
You don't need to memorise the National Law. You just need to be able to answer three questions honestly:
If a practitioner in your team practised while impaired tomorrow, would every manager know whether the practice, as an employer, has a duty to notify?
If a serious concern were raised today, would it become a dated record — or a conversation that fades?
If someone asked in six months when you first knew and what you did, could you show them?
If any answer is "probably not," that's the gap to close — quietly, before you ever need it.
Ahpra — Mandatory notifications: making a mandatory notification about a practitioner
Ahpra — Mandatory reporting and managing concerns about registered health practitioners
Ahpra — Making a mandatory notification (how to raise a concern)
Disclaimer This article is general information only, current as at September 2026, and is not legal or compliance advice. Regulatory requirements can change.
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