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: every practice taken to assessment has been accredited, 35+ to date.
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.
RACGP · AGPAL · QPA · QIP · Melbourne & Australia-wide
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. Urgent timelines or a failed accreditation: a 3 to 4 week turnaround. We have done it in 2 weeks, and passed. It involves long days. We’re prepared if you are.
New practices: accreditation, PIP and WIP are set up from day one. See opening a new practice.
2 to 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 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.
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.
AGPAL is one of the two agencies that assess general practices against the RACGP Standards. The RACGP writes the Standards; AGPAL runs the registration, the portal, the self-assessment and the assessor visit. We prepare the evidence with your team, work in the AGPAL portal alongside your practice manager, and are on site on assessment day. The 6th edition is published, but the Commission has not set a transition date, so the assessment you are preparing for is still the 5th.
Quality Practice Accreditation assesses against the same RACGP Standards for general practices. The evidence a practice has to hold does not change with the agency; the portal, the submission format, the timelines and the fees do.
The RACGP Standards for general practices assume comprehensive, continuing general practice care. A clinic that does one thing (vasectomy, skin and minor surgery, family planning, a nurse-led service), or a dental practice cannot be assessed against them, and an agency will say so. The National Safety and Quality Primary and Community Healthcare (NSQPCH) Standards, assessed by QIP, were written for exactly those services. We work in both.
Assessors now look for evidence across the whole cycle: continuous logs, dated reviews, training records with no gaps.
Assessment day. Certificate issued for three years.
Months 1 to 6. The habits formed for the survey become the practice’s normal: logs, training, reviews.
Months 7 to 18. Cold chain, cleaning, sterilisation and training logs run continuously. Policies reviewed on their dates.
Months 19 to 26. Mid-cycle self-assessment against every criterion. Fix what has drifted while there is time.
Months 27 to 32. Evidence file rebuilt, patient feedback collected and acted on, mock survey, staff interview practice.
Months 33 to 36. Application, pre-survey checks, survey. Cycle restarts.
The RACGP published the 6th edition on 26 August 2026, built around the quintuple aim: patient experience, population health, cost, provider wellbeing and equity. Accreditation has not moved with it. Practices are still assessed against the 5th edition, and the Commission has not published a transition date. We track every development (dates, drafts, what actually changes) on our accreditation news page.
Documentation based on the RACGP 6th edition. We write policies and evidence so each item maps to a Standard and criterion, not a page number. Until the Commission sets a transition date, the assessment itself is still under the 5th.
We read the published Standards, the mapping document, the Commission’s advisories and the agency guidance, and tell you plainly what is a requirement and what is still somebody’s expectation. Read our current summary →
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. 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.
You are normally given a period to provide evidence that the unmet indicators have been fixed before a decision is finalised. 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.
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.
Yes, if you are accrediting with AGPAL. Clause 8.1d of AGPAL’s Client Services Agreement requires a practice to disclose to AGPAL any external consultant contracted or appointed to provide services or support for accreditation preparation or assessment, and clause 8.1e bars that consultant from engaging with, or discussing any aspect of, the assessment with the appointed assessment team before or during the process. AGPAL’s reminder of 18 March 2025 says that failing to disclose a consultant’s involvement, or breaching those conditions, may affect the validity of the assessment.
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.