We have written elsewhere about what is and isn’t confirmed about the 6th edition. This article is the other half: what the consultation draft actually changes, what that adds to a practice’s workload based on our own implementation, and what we expect assessors to focus on. Where something is our view rather than a published requirement, we say so.
Where it stands, August 2026
The RACGP says the 6th edition “will be published shortly” and has not released a date or the final document. The consultation draft that was available has been taken down, which we read as a sign that amendments are still being made. Practices continue to be accredited against the 5th edition until the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme formally transitions, and both the RACGP and AGPAL have indicated a transition period — expected to be around twelve months — during which a practice may choose either edition.
We are attending the PHN-hosted 6th edition webinar on 3 September 2026, presented by an accreditation assessor, and will update this page and our RACGP updates the same week.
What the draft changes
Everything in this section is from the consultation draft and may change before publication.
New structure: five standards instead of three modules
- Foundations of general practice — governance, planning, digital health and AI. A defined and monitored mission and values, a strategic and operational plan, policy management and clear team roles. Digital records, coded clinical terminology, secure messaging, de-identification. For AI: patient consent and privacy, clinical accountability and human oversight, staff training, risk assessment and vendor suitability.
- Clinical governance — records accuracy and coding, medicines management, infection prevention and control, sterilisation, vaccine potency and cold chain, emergency systems and clinical risk. Antibiotic stewardship becomes an explicit criterion with audit. Role-appropriate staff immunisation per the Australian Immunisation Handbook.
- Patient participation — informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, complaints and feedback, access and continuity, with flexibility replacing the fixed three-identifier rule, and consumer engagement in quality improvement that is documented and evidenced.
- Continuous quality improvement — at least one clinical improvement activity every twelve months with baseline measures, a documented plan, staff involvement, reporting to practice leadership, evidence of change made, and environmental performance monitored and reported.
- Point-of-care testing (optional) — for practices that test on site: training, quality control, equipment maintenance, result recording and risk management.
New language, fewer items, higher expectations
“Indicators” become “criteria”; “musts” become “sub-criteria” that describe the system rather than the individual action. The draft has 86 mandatory criteria against the 5th edition’s 117 indicators, with a sharper focus on systems, outcomes and evidence. Consumer expectation statements sit against each criterion so patients understand what they should reasonably expect.
Whole new domains
AI and digital health, environmental sustainability (set goals, monitor and report energy and waste), antibiotic stewardship, structured quality improvement and patient participation. These are not policies to write. They are systems that have to be running, with evidence.
What it adds to the workload — our own numbers
We keep hours on every build. A first-time 5th edition build at a new practice runs, in our experience, between roughly 155 and 195 hours from nothing to certification. Our current, provisional estimate of what 6th edition readiness adds on top — from the consultation draft and our own implementation at practices we run — is another 100 to 165 hours: governance planning, digital-only records and coding, AI governance, the sustainability program, antibiotic stewardship, structured quality improvement with consumer engagement, patient participation systems, staff immunisation, and re-mapping the whole evidence suite to the new criteria.
On the draft as it stands that is an additional 60 to 85 per cent on top of a 5th edition build. On our lived experience, where the manual workarounds and the on-site patient participation work are real rather than estimated, it is closer to double. The honest position is somewhere between, and it cannot be fixed until the edition is released.
One practical reason it is heavier than it looks: on the information we have, Best Practice and other vendors have not yet released 6th edition modules and reporting, with release timing advised to us as mid-2027 and not yet confirmed in writing. Until then several new criteria are met manually.
Our view: what assessors will actually focus on
This section is DocHelp’s opinion, formed from implementing the draft at our own practices and from conversations inside the PHN and accreditation network. It is not the Standards.
1. Compliance across the three years, not the three weeks
The single biggest change is philosophical. Most clinics do things for accreditation and then stop maintaining them; assessors know it, and they expect many practices not to meet the 6th edition for exactly that reason. We expect assessment to look at continuity — date ranges on logs, audits and training, evidence that quality improvement ran every year, minutes that show leadership saw the results — rather than a binder assembled the month before.
2. Longer mandatory record keeping
Today, too many practices keep cleaning, cold-chain and equipment logs for the three months before a survey and let them lapse afterwards. We expect the 6th edition and its assessment guidance to make longer retention of operational logs the norm, in effect covering the cycle. Practices should start keeping every log continuously now; it costs nothing and it is the evidence base the new edition asks for.
3. Repeat assessment for practices that don’t maintain
From what we hear inside the network, a practice judged not to be maintaining compliance may be subject to repeat assessment — yearly, six-monthly or otherwise. The scrutiny on practices that only care about accreditation once every three years is, in our reading, the underlying purpose of the new Standards.
4. AI governance will be assessed as a system
Consent, privacy, human oversight, training and vendor assessment for any AI tool the practice uses — scribes first, then everything else. Practices already using AI scribes without a policy, a consent process and a privacy statement update should fix that now, whichever edition they are surveyed under. See AI in general practice: what to have in place.
5. Sustainability will be assessed on measuring and acting, not outcomes
The draft says a practice must set sustainability goals and monitor and report on energy and waste. The detail is not published. Our working assumption is that assessors will look for a baseline from the bills, a target, and a record of what was done — LED lighting, equipment shut-down routines, waste streams tracked from contractor invoices, digital records reducing printing — reported annually inside the quality improvement cycle. For most practices the running cost is time.
What to do now
- Survey under the 5th edition if you are due in the next twelve months; don’t wait.
- Map every policy and piece of evidence to a Standard and criterion, not a page number, so the move to five standards is a re-mapping exercise.
- Start keeping every operational log continuously — cleaning, cold chain, equipment, sterilisation, training — and don’t stop after the survey.
- Write the AI policy, consent process and privacy statement update if any AI tool is in use.
- Run one documented clinical quality improvement activity a year with a baseline, a plan and a result reported to the owners.
- Pull twelve months of energy and waste figures from the bills. That is your baseline.
Practices we accredit get all of this built to the 5th edition and structured for the 6th, with a gap review the week the final Standards land. How we run accreditation →
- RACGP — Standards 6th edition hub (“will be published shortly”)
- AGPAL — 6th edition pilot and consultation
- AGPAL — Insights into the RACGP Standards 6th edition
- DocHelp implementation records, 2026. Structure and criteria counts are from the consultation draft and may change on publication.
General information for practice owners and managers, not accreditation advice for a specific practice.
Quick answers
Will the 6th edition have more or fewer requirements?
The consultation draft has fewer mandatory items — 86 criteria against the 5th edition’s 117 indicators — but each one describes a working system with evidence rather than a single action. In our implementation experience the workload is higher, not lower, because new domains such as AI governance, digital records, sustainability, antibiotic stewardship and consumer participation have to exist as operating systems, not policies.
Should we survey under the 6th edition this year?
Not until it is published and assessors have assessed against it. Our advice to every practice due in the next twelve months is to survey under the 5th edition — the edition the agencies, the assessors and we all know — and build 6th edition readiness steadily so the next cycle is an update, not a rebuild.
What does “compliance throughout the cycle” mean in practice?
That the logs, audits, training records and quality improvement activity exist for the whole three years, not the three months before the survey. Our expectation is that assessors will look at date ranges and continuity of evidence, and that practices judged not to be maintaining compliance may face more frequent assessment.
Fifteen years in medical practice operations. MBA, Melbourne Business School. Two medical centres built and sold; ten-plus centres overseen today. About Jamal →