In short: DocHelp prepares healthcare services for accreditation against the National Safety and Quality Primary and Community Healthcare (NSQPCH) Standards with QIP (three standards, 65 actions) for services that fall outside the RACGP Standards for general practices. Melbourne and Australia-wide.
The NSQPCH Standards were written for services that deliver care in a primary or community setting whatever their size or scope, and we prepare services for them the same way we prepare general practices for the RACGP Standards.
NSQPCH · QIP · Dental · Specialist & procedural clinics · Allied health
The RACGP Standards for general practices are built on comprehensive, continuing general practice care. Every criterion assumes it: the usual doctor, the ongoing relationship, the whole-of-patient record.
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care published the NSQPCH Standards to close exactly that gap. They apply to services delivering health care in a primary and/or community setting that “vary in size and modes of delivery and are carried out by a diverse range of healthcare providers”. The Standards ask whether the systems exist and are in use, sized honestly to the service.
There are no core and developmental tiers under NSQPCH. Each action is rated Met, Met with recommendations, or Not met, and every applicable action must be Met or Met with recommendations for accreditation to be awarded.
25 actions · 1.01 to 1.25. Governance, leadership and culture. Policies and procedures. Risk, incidents and complaints. Quality improvement. Credentialling and scope of clinical practice. Patient records, results and follow-up. Workforce training and supervision.
8 actions · 2.01 to 2.08. Health literacy and communication. Informed consent. Capacity and substitute decision-making. Shared decision-making. Involving patients and carers in the design and review of the service itself, not just their own care.
32 actions · 3.01 to 3.32. The largest standard. Infection prevention and control, aseptic technique, invasive devices and reprocessing. Antimicrobial stewardship and medication safety. Comprehensive care, recognising and responding to deterioration, communicating critical information.
The Commission draws one clear line: organisations providing consultancy or indirect services, without direct patient care, cannot be assessed against these Standards. Almost everything else is in scope.
| Service type | Typical situation | Framework |
|---|---|---|
| General practice | Comprehensive continuing care, MyMedicare, PIP | RACGP Standards (or NSQPCH by choice) |
| Private dental practice | Voluntary accreditation, registered through the ADA | NSQPCH: see the dental page |
| Specialist & single-purpose clinics | Vasectomy, family planning, skin and minor surgery, women’s and men’s health | NSQPCH: see the specialist page |
| Allied health | Physiotherapy, podiatry, audiology, speech pathology, psychology | NSQPCH |
| Nurse-led and bush nursing services | Nurse practitioner clinics, rural nursing practices | NSQPCH |
| Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services | Community controlled health organisations | NSQPCH |
| Community and NGO health services | Ambulatory palliative care, community programs, PHN-funded services | NSQPCH |
| Consultancy or indirect services | No direct patient care | Not eligible |
QIP is an approved accrediting agency under the Australian Health Service Safety and Quality Accreditation Scheme.
We map your service against all 65 actions and tell you where you actually stand.
Policies, procedures, registers and logs written to describe your service by name, with the people who actually work in it.
We work through AccreditationPro with you, action by action, uploading evidence as it is finished rather than in one panic at the end.
Mock interviews with every staff member, clinical and non-clinical, before the day. If anything comes back Not met there is a remediation period and a secondary review, we work that too.
| Milestone | Timing | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Self-assessment opens | On payment of the initial accreditation invoice | AccreditationPro becomes available |
| Self-assessment submitted | QIP recommends 4 months before expiry | All evidence uploaded, declaration signed; triggers QIP’s evidence check |
| Assessment | Due 6 months before expiry | Dates set with you; an agenda is provided beforehand |
| Preliminary report | Within 5 business days | Lists any non-compliances found |
| Remediation | 60 business days | Only if actions are rated Not met; evidence goes to secondary review |
| Decision and certificate | Within 2 business days of the decision | Certificate, accreditation report and marketing resources issued |
Read those two dates together, because they catch people out: the assessment is due six months before expiry and the recommended submission is four.
Only a short closed list of actions can ever be rated not applicable, and a separate list applies to private dental practices. Exclusions must be applied for in advance with evidence that the action carries little or no risk of harm in your context, determined before assessment, and verified on the day.
If you reprocess any reusable critical or semi-critical device, Action 3.13 applies in full and a Commission advisory sets hard rating rules around a gap analysis against AS 5369:2023, which superseded AS/NZS 4815:2006 and AS/NZS 4187:2014. Decide early and definitively whether you reprocess anything at all.
Commission advisories are mandatory for accrediting agencies to implement. An advisory changes how an action is rated and beats both general guidance and the Guide itself.
What does not transfer is the content. NSQPCH has its own numbering, its own evidence expectations and its own advisories, so we keep it as a separate practice with a separate knowledge base rather than bending RACGP material to fit.
The National Safety and Quality Primary and Community Healthcare Standards, written by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and launched in October 2021. There are three standards (Clinical Governance, Partnering with Consumers, and Clinical Safety), and 65 actions in total.
For most services it is voluntary, but a regulator, funder, insurer or contract can make it a condition. Many services also pursue it because it is the only credible accreditation available to them, and because tenders and referrers increasingly ask for it.
QIP issues certificates valid for two or three years depending on the assessment model: desktop, desktop plus virtual, desktop plus on-site, or a model stipulated by a regulator.
Yes. Most of an NSQPCH build is document and systems work that runs remotely, with on-site or virtual time for the assessment itself.
Requirements and advisories change. Everything on this page reflects the position as we understood it in August 2026, from the Commission’s published Standards and advisories and QIP’s own process documents.