We have written elsewhere about what is and isn’t confirmed about the 6th edition. This article is the other half: what the published Standards actually change, criterion by criterion, 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, September 2026
The RACGP published the 6th edition on 26 August 2026. It is free, 181 pages, with an eight page mapping document against the 5th edition alongside it. Accreditation has not followed. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care put up its own 6th edition page the same day, confirming that the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme currently uses the 5th edition and that transition arrangements will be provided in due course. No start date, no end date, no election window.
One correction while we are here. The twelve-month window in which a practice could choose either edition, which we carried on this page, traces back to a single AGPAL article from September 2024 that also expected publication in early 2026. AGPAL no longer repeats the figure and the RACGP refers the question to the Commission. We have taken it down. Watch the Commission, not the commentary, and our accreditation news page carries each announcement as it lands.
What the 6th edition changes
Everything in this section is from the published Standards, with the criterion code so you can check it yourself.
Four core standards instead of three modules
- Foundations, F1 to F11 - governance, planning, people, ICT and AI. A documented mission, vision and values (F1.A). A strategic plan reviewed every two years with one named person holding strategy and financial management, and an operational plan with its own owner (F1.B, F1.C). Every policy and procedure reviewed at least every two years under version control (F1.D). A governance risk register reported to leadership (F1.F). Environmental sustainability as a criteria set of its own (F3). CPR certification for every member of the practice team, clinical and non-clinical, at least every three years (F4.E). A tested ICT continuity and cyber incident response plan with a named security owner (F8.A, F8.B). A process for assessing and managing digital health technology (F10.A). AI (F11).
- Clinical governance, CG1 to CG13 - a digital clinical information system is mandatory and paper health records are no longer acceptable (CG1.A). Three approved identifiers from a list of five, confirmed every time a patient engages with the practice (CG2.A). Known allergies in a codable field for 100% of active records, up from 90% (CG3.E). Antimicrobial stewardship (CG4.D). A documented clinical risk management process and register, with public health notifications shared to the team (CG7.A). Six facilities indicators collapse into one outcomes criterion, with the toilet, privacy and cleaning requirements spelled out (CG10.A). Equipment maintained and calibrated annually, the AED signposted and not left in the heat (CG11.A). A formal data sharing agreement with anyone using your deidentified data for research or analytics (CG13.D).
- Patient participation, PP1 to PP10 - a documented process for obtaining and documenting informed consent for procedures and treatments (PP4.A). Complaints acknowledged in a reasonable time, registered, and consumers told how to escalate to the complaints commissioner (PP7.B). Consumer engagement replaces the prescribed patient feedback process: formal and informal engagement, evidence that feedback changed something, and evidence that consumers were told (PP8.A). A named clinical team member responsible for training the team in triage (PP9.A). Consumers told how to reach real-time care from a clinician whenever the practice is not open, not only in the defined after-hours period (PP10.A).
- Continuous quality improvement, CQI1 - at least one activity every 12 months, one of which uses coded clinical data, run by a trained quality improvement lead, with performance data reported to leadership (CQI1.A). Environmental performance assessed, reported and acted on (CQI1.B).
Point of care testing, PoCT1 to PoCT8, is optional and sits outside the four. It is assessed alongside or after the general practice visit, and a practice has to meet every mandatory criterion in the four core standards before it can be accredited against it.
New language, and a count we had wrong
Indicators are now criteria. “Must” statements are now sub-criteria that describe the system rather than the individual action. Before publication this page said the draft carried 86 criteria against the 5th edition’s 117 indicators. The published four core standards carry 92 criteria across 35 criteria sets, and Point of care testing adds 8 sets and 18 criteria on top of that. The flagged and unflagged distinction is gone: everything is mandatory unless it is labelled aspirational, and only four criteria are, F8.F, CG3.J, CQI1.C and PoCT6.B. A consumer expectation statement sits against each criteria set, written with the RACGP consumer focus group. It is not assessed.
Jobs that now need a name against them
The edition repeatedly asks for a named person rather than a shared responsibility. Strategy and financial management (F1.B). The operational plan (F1.C). Document sign-off and review (F1.D). Environmental sustainability (F3.C). ICT security, and where that is a contractor, an internal digital governance owner as well (F8.B). Privacy (F9.A). The infection prevention and control coordinator, from the clinical team (CG9.B). Cold chain, with a delegate (CG12.B). Triage training, from the clinical team (PP9.A). The quality improvement lead, trained in the role (CQI1.A). Fill these in before you write a single new policy. Most practices already have the people; what they do not have is the document that says so.
Whole new domains
AI (F11), environmental sustainability (F3, and again at CG4.C, PP6.B and CQI1.B), antimicrobial stewardship (CG4.D), clinical risk management (CG7.A) and secondary use of practice data (CG13.D). These are not policies to write. They are systems that have to be running, with evidence.
What quietly went away
Worth knowing before you carry forward a policy nobody needs. There is no sub-criterion requiring patients to be told the potential out-of-pocket cost of a referred service. The right to seek other clinical opinions has no equivalent. Home and other visits are absorbed into PP9.B as one way of providing care when a patient cannot attend, an option in guidance rather than a requirement. Continuous and comprehensive care is not mapped to a criterion at all; it now sits inside the eligibility definition of a general practice, alongside the 50% rule and the new GP-led care definition.
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 estimate of what 6th edition readiness adds on top, formed while implementing 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.
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. One caveat we would rather state than hide: we built that range against the consultation draft, and the published edition is larger than the draft was. We are re-counting it against the 92 criteria and will replace this number rather than leave a stale one sitting here.
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 new edition at our own practices and from conversations inside the PHN and accreditation network. It is not the Standards.
1. Compliance across the whole three-year cycle
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 what you measure and act on
F3 asks for a climate risk assessment, documented strategies to reduce direct and indirect emissions, and a named team member with primary responsibility. CQI1.B asks for progress to be assessed and reported to leadership with actions taken. Measuring the footprint itself is aspirational (CQI1.C), which tells you where the assessment weight sits. 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.
The preparation list, and what is and is not confirmed about the 6th edition, is kept on one page rather than repeated here: RACGP Standards 6th edition: status and what to do now →
Practices we accredit are built to the 5th edition and structured for the 6th, with the gap review against the published criteria running now. How we run accreditation →
When you are ready to work through it practice-by-practice, the free RACGP 6th edition readiness tracker turns the new criteria into a checklist you can keep.
- RACGP - Standards for general practices, 6th edition (full text)
- RACGP - Standards 6th edition hub and mapping document
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care - RACGP Standards for general practices 6th edition
- AGPAL - Key takeaways from the introductory webinars, 8 September 2026
- DocHelp implementation records, 2026. Criterion codes and counts are from the published Standards; the hours are ours and are being re-counted against the published edition.
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?
Fewer items, more work. The four core standards carry 92 criteria across 35 criteria sets, against the 5th edition’s 117 indicators, but each criterion 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, mandatory digital records, sustainability, antimicrobial stewardship and consumer engagement have to exist as operating systems, not policies.
Should we survey under the 6th edition this year?
You cannot. The Standards are published, but accreditation under the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme is still assessed against the 5th edition and the Commission has not published a transition date. Our advice to every practice due in the next twelve months is unchanged: 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 rather than 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. Operating since 2015, multiple healthcare partners Australia-wide. About Jamal →