A concern gets an owner, evidence, and a recorded decision.

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Private-information boundary: The public contact form is for routing. Do not include patient information, client secrets, credentials, identity documents, private work, privileged material, or production data. Active professionals use the protected channel named in their engagement.

Choose the correct path.

• Rigors appeal: use the appeal route named in the readiness decision for a claimed process, record, conflict, integrity, or accommodation error.

• Professional grievance: use this process for a payment record, conduct, discrimination, retaliation, access, security, scope, confidentiality, attribution, deactivation, termination, or engagement-process concern.

• Urgent escalation: use the immediate engagement or security channel for safety, active unauthorized access, suspected fraud, material privacy exposure, or another condition that should not wait in a general queue.

• Emergency or mandatory external report: use the relevant emergency, regulator, law-enforcement, professional-duty, or legal channel when circumstances require it. This procedure does not replace those routes.

What the grievance process covers.

A professional may raise:

• an inaccurate payment, time, approval, deliverable, identity, contribution, or status record;

• a conflict of interest or concern about reviewer independence;

• discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or other conduct inconsistent with the professional code;

• an unsafe, unlawful, unauthorized, or materially out-of-scope instruction;

• a privacy, security, access, confidentiality, or data-handling concern;

• a quality-process defect, concealed error, or misattributed work;

• a suspension, deactivation, reassignment, termination, or closeout concern; or

• another material failure to follow the published process or written engagement.

The record follows six steps.

1. Receipt and classification. The concern is assigned a reference, classified by process and urgency, and routed to the responsible owner. A public inquiry may need to move to a protected channel before evidence is accepted.

2. Immediate containment. Access, safety, privacy, security, payment preservation, evidence preservation, or client continuity measures are assigned when delay could increase harm.

3. Conflict check. The assigned owner declares material involvement or conflict. A person materially implicated does not investigate and close the concern alone; ownership moves to an independent reviewer.

4. Evidence and response. The record separates allegations, available evidence, disputed facts, applicable terms or policy, the requested correction, and the response of materially affected parties.

5. Decision and action. The reviewer records findings, reasons, decision owner, effective condition, corrective action, communication, and any review path provided by the applicable process or agreement.

6. Correction and closure. Corrections append to the record rather than erasing its history. Closeout identifies completed action, remaining obligations, access or handoff changes, and the owner of any follow-up.

Good-faith reporting is protected from selection retaliation.

A good-faith concern does not alter a Rigors score or become an undisclosed client-selection penalty. Deliberately false evidence, harassment, threats, confidentiality breaches, or other misconduct remain subject to the applicable integrity and professional-code process; raising an unwelcome issue is not misconduct by itself.

Where a concern implicates the assigned assessor, delivery lead, operations owner, or principal, that person does not control the final review alone. The record identifies the substitute owner and the conflict basis.

Adverse operating decisions stay attributable.

A suspension, deactivation, reassignment, or termination record identifies the applicable agreement or policy basis, evidence, decision owner, effective condition, access and data actions, payment and deliverable closeout, client continuity, handoff, notice, and any review path the actual terms provide.

Allegations remain distinct from findings. A later correction preserves both the original record and the attributable change.

Outcomes follow the evidence and controlling terms.

A grievance may be upheld, partly upheld, not upheld, corrected, remediated, reassigned, referred to another process, or closed because the available evidence does not support further action. The decision records the reason and the next route, if one applies.

Response ownership, available remedies, continued work, reassignment, compensation, termination, dispute handling, and mandatory local rights follow the executed agreement and applicable law. This page describes the operating process; it is not the professional's contract or personal legal advice.

Route the issue without exposing it.

Use the professional-support intake for a routing question or to request the protected path. Include only enough information to identify the process and your own reference.

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