Does a historical disclosure start a new SIRS clock?

Yes. If a person receiving care discloses something that happened weeks or months ago, the provider becomes aware at the point of disclosure, and a fresh SIRS clock starts from that disclosure, not from the original event.

What counts as the provider becoming aware of an incident?

A provider becomes aware when a person in the organisation with a role in incident management knows, or reasonably ought to know, that a reportable incident may have occurred. A worker witnessing or being told of an incident is the start of provider awareness, which is why the internal notification pathway needs to be fast and recorded.

When Does the SIRS Clock Actually Start? Provider Awareness Explained | Teiro

Q: When does the SIRS reporting clock start?

The SIRS reporting clock starts at the moment the provider becomes aware of the incident, not the moment the incident occurred. For a Priority 1 incident, the 24-hour window runs from that point of awareness.

Awareness, not occurrence

The SIRS clock starts at the moment the provider becomes aware of the incident, not the moment the incident occurred. For a Priority 1 incident, the 24-hour window runs from that point of awareness. For a Priority 2 incident, the 30 calendar day window runs from the same point.

This is generous in principle and dangerous in practice, because most organisations never record the moment they became aware. If you cannot say when your clock started, you cannot prove you met the deadline.

Historical disclosures start a fresh clock today

If a person receiving care, or their family, discloses today something that happened weeks or months ago, the provider becomes aware today. A fresh clock starts from that disclosure, not from the original event. This catches providers out constantly, because it feels like old news, but for SIRS purposes it is a new notification obligation with its own deadline.

The verbal-escalation trap

The most common failure mode is a verbal chain with no record. A carer phones a coordinator, the coordinator tells the manager, and by the time anyone opens the incident register three hours have passed and nobody can say exactly when awareness happened. On a 24-hour clock, those hours matter.

The fix is a timestamp, not a policy reminder. The moment a worker becomes aware and reports an incident should be captured with a time attached, so awareness is a recorded fact rather than something people try to reconstruct later.

Weekends and public holidays: operational risk, not an extension

A deadline that lands on a Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday does not move. Neither the 24-hour nor the 30 calendar day timeframe is defined in business days, so the calendar keeps running through the weekend.

What a weekend deadline does create is operational risk: your office may be unstaffed on the day the notification is due. The answer is to roster someone who can lodge it, not to assume the deadline waits until Monday. This is especially sharp for small and home-care providers with no after-hours decision maker on site.

Use the deadline calculator to see when your deadline falls and whether it lands on a weekend or public holiday.

Calculate your deadline from awareness Priority 1 vs Priority 2 Is this reportable? Decision tool Back to the SIRS guide

Primary source

This page is based on guidance published by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) under the Aged Care Act 2024 and the Aged Care Rules 2025, in force from 1 November 2025.

When does the SIRS clock actually start?

Awareness, not occurrence

Historical disclosures start a fresh clock today

The verbal-escalation trap

Weekends and public holidays: operational risk, not an extension

The record already exists by the time the clock is running