In short: DocHelp prepares general practices in Melbourne and across Australia for RACGP, AGPAL, QPA and QIP accreditation — first-time, renewal and failed-assessment recovery — working on site with your team. 100% pass rate over fifteen years.
Whether you’re applying for the first time, recovering from a failed assessment, or renewing on a tight deadline — we deliver compliant centres on schedule. Specialists in the RACGP Standards 5th edition, already preparing practices for the 6th. One hundred per cent pass rate over fifteen years.
RACGP · AGPAL · QPA · QIP · Melbourne & Australia-wide
Most practice owners we meet aren’t failing because they don’t care about quality. They’re failing because the receptionist or office manager has been quietly drowning under preparation work nobody trained them to do — while the doctors stay heads-down with patients.
By the time someone realises the assessment is in three weeks and the infection control manual is still a template, it’s panic stations. Practices then spend tens of thousands on emergency consultants, locum staff and external contractors to scrape through. Three years later, the same thing happens.
We don’t email you a checklist. We come into your practice, sit with your team, identify the gaps, and rebuild what needs rebuilding — alongside your staff, so they learn the work, not just receive the result.
By the time we leave, your team understands what they’re doing and why. The next cycle in three years isn’t a crisis — it’s a check-in.
From planning twelve months ahead to a failed-assessment notice on your desk — there’s a path to compliance, and we’ve walked all of them.
New practice or one that’s never been accredited. We start with the audit, build the policy framework, train staff, and walk you through every step from registration to certificate — built so your team is self-sufficient by the end.
The cycle’s coming up and you want it done properly this time. We assess what’s changed, refresh documentation against the current edition, train new staff, and run a mock survey before the real one.
You’ve failed, or are about to. Three weeks left. This is our specialty — we’ve taken centres that failed most of their indicators back to full accreditation in two to three weeks. It involves long days. We’re prepared if you are.
2–3 hours, in person. We assess every aspect of the practice against the current Standards. You leave with a written report identifying every gap and risk.
Based on what we find, we quote scope and timeline. Project-based for tight deadlines or monthly for longer journeys. 50% upfront, 50% on accreditation success.
We come into your practice. Rebuild policies. Train staff. Set up systems. Run the mock survey. Whatever it takes — including weekends in tight-deadline cases.
You pass. Your team has been trained to maintain the systems independently. The next cycle is quick, cheap and stress-free.
Because we’re hands-on operators, an accreditation engagement covers far more than documents. Here’s what’s typically included — every engagement is shaped to what your practice specifically needs.
The RACGP Standards for general practices (5th edition) are the framework every accreditation agency assesses against. Each standard has criteria and indicators, and every indicator is a piece of evidence the assessor will ask to see.
The standards every general practice must meet: communication and patient participation, patients’ rights and needs, practice governance and management, the practice team, clinical management, information management, the content of health records, and education and training.
How the practice measures and improves what it does: quality improvement activities, clinical indicators, and clinical risk management — incidents, near misses and what changed as a result.
The clinical and physical environment: access to care, comprehensive care, qualifications of the clinical team, health promotion and preventive care, clinical management of health issues, and the practice environment — infection prevention and control, cold chain, equipment and emergency response.
Accreditation in Melbourne. We prepare practices across Melbourne and surrounds on site — north, west, south-east and the inner suburbs — and support practices Australia-wide remotely, with on-site visits for mock surveys and assessment days. Whichever agency you use, AGPAL, QPA or QIP, the Standards are the same and so is our preparation.
Assessors now look for evidence across the whole cycle — continuous logs, dated reviews, training records with no gaps. This is the rhythm we build into a practice so the next survey is a check-in, not a rebuild.
Assessment day. Certificate issued for three years.
Months 1–6. The habits formed for the survey become the practice’s normal: logs, training, reviews.
Months 7–18. Cold chain, cleaning, sterilisation and training logs run continuously. Policies reviewed on their dates.
Months 19–26. Mid-cycle self-assessment against every criterion. Fix what has drifted while there is time.
Months 27–32. Evidence file rebuilt, patient feedback collected and acted on, mock survey, staff interview practice.
Months 33–36. Application, pre-survey checks, survey. Cycle restarts.
The RACGP has said the 6th edition “will be published shortly”, with the draft built around the quintuple aim — patient experience, population health, cost, provider wellbeing and equity. Practices are still assessed against the 5th edition today.
Every indicator we prepare is mapped to the current 5th edition Standards, because that is what your assessor will use until the RACGP publishes the 6th and the transition window opens.
We write policies and evidence so each item maps to a Standard and criterion, not a page number. When the 6th edition arrives, updating is a mapping exercise — not a rewrite.
We track the RACGP’s consultation drafts, the AGPAL pilot findings and the transition guidance, and tell you plainly what is confirmed and what is speculation. Read our current summary →
Practices we accredit now get a 6th edition gap review when the final Standards are published, so the next cycle stays a check-in.
A first-time build is roughly 155 to 195 hours of work. Embedded with us in full days it is about three months, with the patient-feedback cycle setting the floor; a practice manager doing it a day a week alongside the job takes closer to nine. Then there is the other timeline — the one that has happened three times now, the same way each time.
The practice had failed its assessment with around eighty per cent of indicators met. The owners tried to find help, or to fix it themselves. Staff left during the attempt. With two weeks to the re-assessment they called us — lost, short-handed and unsure where to start.
Within the fortnight, compliance was met at one hundred per cent. New modules in place, staff trained and ready for interview, evidence filed. The assessors who came back were the same assessors who had recorded the failure, and each time they said they could not believe the change in the team, and congratulated everyone on achieving it in so short a period.
It took long workdays, nights and weekends. It also took a team that decided to do it and leadership that knew the order to do it in. With both, anything is possible in two weeks. Without them, nine months is not enough. We would still rather see you early — but if you are reading this with a fortnight left, call.
For a practice starting from scratch, allow three to six months from the first audit to the assessment visit if the team is available to do the work with us. Re-accreditation on a practice with sound documentation is faster. Failed-audit recovery is the exception: we have taken centres that failed most of their indicators back to full accreditation in two to three weeks, because we work full days on site alongside the team.
No. As at August 2026 the RACGP says the Standards for general practices 6th edition "will be published shortly". The draft went to public consultation in late 2024 and again in September 2025. Practices are still assessed against the 5th edition today, and AGPAL has indicated a twelve-month transition after publication during which practices can choose either edition. We prepare every practice to 5th edition now and structure the documentation so the move to 6th is an update, not a rebuild.
The RACGP writes the Standards for general practices. AGPAL and QPA are the two main independent agencies that assess practices against those Standards and issue accreditation. QIP is a broader accreditation body that also assesses against the RACGP Standards and other frameworks. The Standards are the same whichever agency you choose; the process, portal, cost and assessor style differ. We work with all of them and can advise which suits your practice.
You are normally given a period to provide evidence that the unmet indicators have been fixed before a decision is finalised. That window is where most practices panic. We come in, rebuild the failed items — usually documentation, training records, cold chain, infection control and privacy — retrain the staff, and prepare the evidence pack. Three centres this year came to us at 80 out of 90 on their initial assessment and all passed within their deadline.
It depends entirely on the gap between where the practice is and where the Standards need it to be, which is why we start with a free two to three hour on-site audit and written report. From there we quote a fixed scope. Accreditation engagements are typically 50% upfront and 50% on a successful result, so our fee is tied to the outcome.
Yes. Before the real assessment we run a full mock survey — the documentation review, the site walk-through, the staff interviews and the clinical record review — in the same format the assessors use, then fix whatever it finds. Our clients rarely see a question at the real visit that we have not already asked them.