Every DocHelp engagement starts with a free two to three hour walk-through of the practice. After enough of them, the findings stop being surprising. These are the twelve gaps we see most often in Melbourne general practices — roughly in the order we find them as we walk from the front door to the back office.
At the front desk
1. The receptionist is doing three jobs
Booking, billing, triage, recalls, results, scanning, the phones, and increasingly the practice manager’s admin. Nothing gets done badly on purpose; everything gets done in a hurry. The tell is a full voicemail box at 9:15am and a results inbox nobody has opened since Tuesday. What it costs: lost bookings, missed item numbers and a receptionist who leaves within the year.
2. Nobody can explain the privacy process
Ask a receptionist what they would do if a patient’s results went to the wrong person, and the honest answer is usually “ask the manager”. The privacy policy exists; the process lives in one head. Assessors ask reception, not managers.
3. Triage is improvised
A written triage protocol is a requirement, and most practices have one on paper. Fewer have a reception team that can tell you what happens when a patient calls with chest pain, because nobody trained them on it. This one is a clinical risk before it is a compliance gap.
In the clinical rooms
4. The cleaning schedule and the cleaning records don’t match
The infection control manual says surfaces are cleaned between patients and rooms are cleaned daily to a schedule. The sign-off sheets have gaps, use the wrong products, or don’t exist. The practice is usually clean. The evidence isn’t. This is one of the most common failed areas at assessment.
5. The cold-chain log has holes in it
Fridge temperatures not recorded on weekends, a data logger nobody has downloaded, no documented response to an excursion. Vaccine management fails practices every cycle and it is entirely a records discipline problem.
6. Reprocessing and sterilisation are done by memory
Where practices reprocess instruments, the process is often correct and the documentation — validation, cycle logs, maintenance — is patchy. Where they don’t, the single-use policy is frequently unwritten.
7. The doctors’ bag and emergency equipment are unchecked
Expired adrenaline, an oxygen cylinder nobody has tested, an emergency drug list that doesn’t match the drawer. A five-minute monthly check with a signed sheet fixes it permanently.
In the documentation
8. The policy manual is a template
Bought or borrowed, never adapted, referencing software the practice doesn’t use and roles it doesn’t have. Staff have never read it because it doesn’t describe their job. A manual that matches the practice is shorter, more useful and passes.
9. There are no training records
Staff have been trained — usually well, usually by the practice manager, usually verbally. There is nothing to show an assessor. Orientation checklists, annual CPR and infection control training, and a simple training register close this gap.
10. Credentialing files are incomplete
Ahpra registration checked once at hiring and never again; indemnity certificates expired; no record of the annual check. It takes an hour a year per doctor and most practices have never done it systematically.
In the business
11. The practice is not billing the work it already does
Care plans and health assessments due and never booked. Incentive items missed. Item numbers chosen by habit rather than by the rules. Every audit we do finds revenue sitting in the appointment book, and the practice manager usually has no report that would show it — which is why we set up Cubiko.
12. The practice manager has nobody to call
The most consistent finding of all. A capable person promoted from reception, learning compliance, HR, billing and doctor management in real time, with an owner who is in consults all day. They are not failing. They are unsupported. Almost every other gap on this list traces back here.
None of these gaps is unusual and none is fatal on its own. They matter because they compound — a tired receptionist, an unsupported manager, a records discipline that has slipped — and because, at assessment, the practice cannot prove the good care it actually provides.
What happens after the audit
You get a written report listing every gap we found and what it would take to close it. Some practices fix the list themselves. Some ask us to embed with the team and do it with them — the documentation, the training, the systems, the billing — until the practice runs properly without us. Either way, you know where you stand.
Book a free on-site audit or call 0403 275 771.
Quick answers
What does a DocHelp practice audit involve?
Two to three hours on site. We walk the practice, look at the documentation and records, sit at reception, talk to the practice manager, nurse and a doctor, and check the practice against the current RACGP Standards and the way it actually runs. You get a written report listing every gap and risk, with no obligation.
Is the audit really free?
Yes. It is how every DocHelp engagement starts and it is the most reliable way for both of us to know what the practice actually needs. If you want help fixing what we find, we quote the scope. If you don’t, you keep the report.
Fifteen years in medical practice operations. MBA, Melbourne Business School. Two medical centres built and sold; ten-plus centres overseen today. About Jamal →