RACGP 6th Edition Released: What Changes and What to Do Now

Key Takeaways

• The RACGP released the Standards for general practices (6th edition) on 26 August 2026. It is published in full on racgp.org.au with a downloadable PDF, and the release marks 30 years since the first edition in 1996.
• Your practice is still accredited against the 5th edition. The RACGP's own FAQ says transition arrangements, including timing and accreditation requirements, will be communicated by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. No transition date has been announced.
• The 6th edition has five standards: Foundations of general practice, Clinical governance, Patient participation, Continuous quality improvement, and an optional Point-of-care testing standard. The RACGP's mapping guide lists 92 criteria across the four core standards, of which three are aspirational.
• The changes with the most operational bite are digital-only clinical information systems (CG1.A), AI governance for practices that use AI tools (F11), environmental sustainability (F3, CG4.C, PP6.B and CQI1.B), abuse and violence response (F4.C), and informed consent for procedures (PP4.A).
• The Standards do not require any practice to adopt AI. The RACGP is explicit that the F11 criteria apply only to practices that use AI tools.
• The MyMedicare accreditation exemption still expires on 31 December 2026. The 6th edition release does not move that date, and a practice starting accreditation now will almost certainly be assessed against the 5th edition.

The RACGP released the Standards for general practices (6th edition) on 26 August 2026, three decades after the first edition landed in 1996. The full text is live on racgp.org.au alongside a downloadable PDF and a mapping guide back to the 5th edition. In the media release, RACGP President Dr Michael Wright described patient needs, preferences and experiences as embedded throughout the new RACGP Standards; Dr Louise Acland, who chairs the RACGP Expert Committee for Standards for General Practices, called the edition "continuity amid change".

What the release does not do is change what your assessor looks at next month. This guide covers what was published, where accreditation actually stands today, the changes that will cost real work when the transition happens, and the preparation that is worth doing this week rather than after the Commission publishes its arrangements.

For the full structure of the 6th edition, standard by standard, see our companion post on the five standards and what is new in each.

What the RACGP released

The 6th edition is published as a complete document, not a summary or a consultation draft. Alongside it the RACGP has published a mapping of the 6th edition to the 5th edition, a what practices need to know FAQ, and a set of hub articles on the areas that changed most.

The media release lists the new and updated topics as defining and planning for your practice, environmental sustainability, artificial intelligence, reprocessing of reusable medical devices, engaging consumers, and continuous quality improvement. The RACGP says the edition follows more than 18 months of consultation, aligns with recommendations from the 2021 Review of General Practice Accreditation Arrangements, and was developed in line with International Society for Quality in Health Care principles.

The structural headline is that indicators are gone. The 5th edition used flagged and unflagged indicators, and only the flagged ones were mandatory. The 6th edition drops that entirely: all criteria must be met for accreditation except those labelled aspirational, of which there are three across the four core standards (F8.F, CG3.J and CQI1.C). Criterion codes are now alphanumeric, built from the standard prefix, the position of the criteria set within the standard, and the position of the criterion within the set. F11.A is the first criterion in the eleventh criteria set of the Foundations standard.

Where accreditation actually stands right now

Read this part before you change anything.

The RACGP's what practices need to know page answers the question of whether practices can choose which edition to be assessed against by saying that further information about transition arrangements, including timing and accreditation requirements, will be communicated by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. It adds that all practices undergoing accreditation will need to meet the sixth edition Standards following the determined transition period. The media release says the arrangements under the National General Practice Accreditation (NGPA) Scheme will be published on the Commission's website soon.

As at today, the Commission's NGPA Scheme page still describes the scheme as the framework for accreditation to the RACGP Standards for general practices (5th edition) and the RACGP Standards for point-of-care testing (5th edition). It says that following the release of the 6th edition it will work with accrediting agencies to outline a plan to transition, and that this will give practices guidance on expectations, timelines and available resources. That plan does not exist yet.

So the position is: the document is published, and the assessment framework has not moved. Accrediting agencies assess against the 5th edition today. If your practice has an assessment booked for the next few months, it is a 5th edition assessment.

You will see other sources quoting a 12-month dual-edition window. That figure is not in the RACGP release, the FAQ, or on the Commission's page. Treat it as unverified until the Commission publishes the arrangements, and do not build a project plan on it.

Watch two places for the announcement: the Commission's National General Practice Accreditation Scheme page, and your own accrediting agency. Four agencies assess general practices under the scheme: ACHS, AGPAL, Global-Mark and QPA. Your agency will tell you which edition your next assessment runs against, and it is the only answer that binds you.

What the new structure looks like

The 6th edition replaces the 5th edition's three modules with four core standards plus an optional fifth. Foundations of general practice (F1 to F11) covers how the practice is defined, planned, governed, staffed and secured. Clinical governance (CG1 to CG13) covers clinical systems, records, guidelines, risk, infection prevention, equipment, vaccines and research. Patient participation (PP1 to PP10) covers information, communication, consent, accessibility, complaints and consumer engagement. Continuous quality improvement is a single criteria set, CQI1, with three criteria. The fifth standard, Point-of-care testing, runs PoCT1 to PoCT8 and applies only to practices that perform it.

Two things ride along with each criteria set. Guidance, split into "Why this is important" and "Meeting these criteria", carries the context and intent behind each criterion, and the RACGP asks practices to read it in full. And a consumer expectation statement, developed with consumers, captures what the set means to patients; those statements are not accreditation requirements.

Our standards guide walks through all five standards and every criteria set. The rest of this post concentrates on the criteria that will change how a practice actually runs.

The changes with the most operational bite

These are the criteria most likely to need new systems, new evidence or new money, drawn from the mapping guide's "New" and "Expanded" rows and the RACGP's what-to-know page.

Paper health records are out (CG1.A)

This is the hardest-edged change in the edition. The RACGP's what-to-know page states it plainly: paper health records are no longer acceptable, and practices must use a digital clinical information system to manage patient health information. CG1.A itself requires the practice to have a digital clinical information system, and where more than one is used, to maintain up-to-date health summaries in each system and a record of each consultation or interaction in each patient health record, including where the clinical notes live.

Hybrid arrangements survive, but only in the sense that a practice may still need paper in some settings, for instance where it sees patients at a residential aged care facility. The systems themselves must be digital. The mapping guide classes CG1.A as Expanded from the 5th edition indicators C6.2A and C6.2B rather than New, but the practical effect for a practice still running paper files is a system change, not a policy change, and system changes take budget and lead time.

Artificial intelligence, but only if you use it (F11)

F11 is new and has two criteria. F11.A covers safe, secure use of AI consistent with existing standards, including processes for the clinical team to obtain and document informed consent from patients where AI is involved in an aspect of their care. F11.B requires the practice to assess and evaluate its AI use, with a process to assess risk before implementation and processes for monitoring, review and quality improvement afterwards.

The caveat matters as much as the criteria. The RACGP states that the Standards do not require practices to adopt or use AI tools, and that the AI criteria are only applicable and mandatory for practices that use them. If your practice runs an AI scribe, an AI triage tool or AI-assisted coding, F11 applies to you and you will need documented governance for it. If it does not, F11 does not apply.

F10 sits alongside it and is also new. F10.A requires digital health technologies to be used safely and securely, with informed consent processes, a documented process for assessing and managing the technologies, and access to appropriate technical support for the team.

Environmental sustainability turns up in four places (F3, CG4.C, PP6.B, CQI1.B)

F3 Environmental sustainability and responsibility is entirely new: all three of its criteria have no 5th edition equivalent. F3.A asks the practice to be aware of and take steps to address its climate resilience, including identifying climate-related risks to operations. F3.B asks it to be aware of and take steps to minimise its environmental impact, with documented strategies to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. F3.C asks for at least one member of the practice team with primary responsibility for environmental sustainability.

The theme then reappears in three other standards. CG4.C, new, asks the practice to support the clinical team to adopt environmentally sustainable and climate resilient clinical practices. PP6.B, new, asks the practice to share information with patients about environmental issues relevant to the healthcare they receive. CQI1.B, new, asks the practice to assess and act on its environmental performance and report progress to practice leadership. CQI1.C, also new, asks for measurement of environmental-impact metrics and is the one criterion of the four that is aspirational.

Named accountability is the piece to notice. F3.C is a role assignment, and role assignments are the sort of thing an assessor can check in one question.

Recognising and responding to abuse and violence (F4.C)

F4.C is new. It requires role-appropriate training and supporting processes for recognising and responding to abuse and violence, including family, domestic and sexual violence, with recognised guidelines adopted. The rest of F4 also broadens: the what-to-know page lists expanded expectations for role-specific training, ongoing competency, person-centred care and Medicare billing education.

Informed consent for procedures and treatments (PP4.A)

Under the 5th edition, the dedicated consent criterion covered a third party being present during a consultation, and informed patient decisions sat under C1.3. PP4.A is new: the mapping guide gives it no direct 5th edition equivalent, and it requires processes to obtain and document informed consent for clinical procedures and treatments generally. PP4.B keeps the third-party requirement. If your consent documentation today is a single form about observers and students, that is not enough for PP4.A.

Codable demographic fields and allergies (CG3)

CG3 broadly aligns with the 5th edition but adds two things worth checking against your clinical software configuration now. Demographic and identification details must be recorded in codable fields (CG3.A, Expanded), and all active patient health records must record known allergies or a record of no known allergies (CG3.E, Expanded). CG3.J, which asks for additional demographic details in codable fields including ethnicity, birth sex, gender and preferred pronouns, is the aspirational criterion in this set.

Free-text fields where a codable field exists is a common way to fail this quietly. Run the query before an assessor does.

Clinical risk management as a system (CG7.A)

CG7.A is new: a clinical risk management system that identifies, monitors, mitigates and evaluates clinical risks, with a documented process behind it. CG7.B, the incident and near miss requirement carried over from QI3.1A and QI3.1B, is Expanded. The 5th edition asked practices to manage incidents; the 6th asks for a system that finds risks before they become incidents.

Quality improvement with coded data on a 12-month clock (CQI1.A)

CQI1.A now requires the practice to undertake at least one quality improvement activity every 12 months, one of which includes the use of coded clinical data. It also requires training for the team members with primary responsibility for QI, a record of team feedback about QI systems, documented improvements made in response to feedback, complaints or audits, and processes to report performance data and QI activities to practice leadership.

That last one is a reporting line, not a document. If your QI activity currently lives in one person's folder and never reaches a practice meeting, that is the gap.

Governance, document control and the practice's own direction (F1)

F1 gained three new criteria: a documented mission, vision and values feeding a strategic approach to care (F1.A); a governance process supporting oversight of quality, safety and performance, with designated governance responsibilities (F1.F); and policies, procedures and operational documents that are current, accurate and accessible, with review built in (F1.D). Strategic planning, operational planning, ethical issue management and governance risk management are all Expanded from 5th edition content.

F1.D is the one that quietly touches everything else. Version control on the policy suite is now its own criterion rather than an implied expectation, which makes it cheap to fix now and expensive to reconstruct later.

What to do now

The RACGP's own list of what practices should start doing is short: review governance and risk structures, identify responsibility holders such as sustainability and AI where applicable, make policy version control processes clear, review how coded clinical data is used, and get familiar with the new structure. Below is how that translates into work you can assign this week. One rule sits over all of it: your next assessment is still a 5th edition assessment.

1. Keep your 5th edition evidence current. This is the first item for a reason. Until the Commission publishes the transition plan, the 44 criteria of the 5th edition are what an assessor rates. Our self-assessment guide works through them criterion by criterion, and the RACGP Accreditation Readiness Quiz gives you a fast baseline.
2. Read the mapping guide, then read the criteria it points at. The mapping guide shows where 5th edition content landed in the 6th, which makes it a good orientation tool. It is not a compliance checklist, and the RACGP says so in the document itself: practices should not rely on it to determine accreditation requirements or assess compliance.
3. Name the two new responsibility holders. F3.C requires a team member with primary responsibility for environmental sustainability. F8.B and F11 imply someone accountable for digital governance and, if you use AI, for AI oversight. Deciding who those people are costs nothing today.
4. Audit your clinical software configuration. Check that demographic and identification details are in codable fields, that every active record carries an allergy entry or a "no known allergies" entry, and that health summaries are coded. If you run more than one clinical information system, check that each holds a current health summary and consultation records.
5. Fix policy version control. Every policy dated, versioned, owned by a named person, and on a review schedule. F1.D makes this its own criterion, and it is the single cheapest piece of 6th edition preparation available.
6. Write down what your AI tools actually do. If you use an AI scribe or any AI-assisted clinical tool, list it, note what patient information it touches, and record what you tell patients about it. That list becomes the F11 evidence when the transition happens, and it is worth having under the Privacy Act regardless.
7. Book a QI activity that uses coded data. CQI1.A wants one every 12 months with at least one using coded clinical data, reported to practice leadership. Running one now under the 5th edition costs you nothing and gives you the pattern.
8. Do not rebuild the policy suite yet. Wait for the Commission's transition arrangements before you commission a full rewrite. You do not yet know the assessment expectations, the timeline, or whether a dual-edition period applies, and rewriting 40 policies against a document whose assessment guidance is still being worked out is the most expensive way to be early.

If you are unsure which policies your practice needs, our library of compliance policy templates is mapped to Australian healthcare standards including current RACGP accreditation requirements.

The 31 December 2026 MyMedicare deadline has not moved

One date in this space is fixed, and it is not a 6th edition date. The MyMedicare accreditation exemption, which lets unaccredited practices register while they work toward accreditation, expires on 31 December 2026. From 1 January 2027 practices that are not accredited lose their MyMedicare registration, and with it Chronic Condition Management items, the expanded telehealth rules for registered patients, and Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program eligibility.

The 6th edition release does not change that. If anything it sharpens the point: a practice starting accreditation now will be assessed against the 5th edition, because that is what accrediting agencies assess today, and accreditation is a multi-month process. Our MyMedicare compliance guide covers the obligations that come with registration in full.

Common mistakes to avoid

Treating 26 August 2026 as the compliance date. It is the publication date. The compliance date sits inside transition arrangements the Commission has not published. Practices that confuse the two spend the next quarter rebuilding against a standard nobody is assessing them on.

Building a project plan on the 12-month window. The figure circulates, and it is not in any primary source. Plan for an announcement, not for a duration.

Discarding 5th edition evidence. The evidence you hold against the 44 current criteria is what your next assessment rates, and most of it maps forward. The mapping guide classes the large majority of 6th edition criteria as Retained, Consolidated or Expanded rather than New. Throwing it out to start fresh is the worst possible move.

Assuming F11 applies to you. It does not unless you use AI tools. Practices that do not are under no obligation to adopt them.

Reading the criteria without the guidance. The RACGP is explicit that the guidance carries the context and intent, and that "could" in the guidance means the examples are optional and not exhaustive. Reading only the criterion wording is how practices over-build.

For a broader view of what catches practices out at assessment, see our guide to common RACGP accreditation failures.

How ClinicComply helps

Accreditation, in either edition, is a gap identification, evidence organisation and team coordination problem. ClinicComply maps all 44 criteria of the RACGP Standards 5th edition across the three modules, so you can see which criteria have documented evidence and which are outstanding, and export a structured evidence pack rather than assembling one from shared drives the week before an assessment.

That work carries forward. Dated policies with named owners and review schedules answer F1.D directly. Assigned tasks with due dates and automated reminders are how F3.C and the digital governance responsibilities get held by a person rather than by nobody. Incident and risk records feed CG7, training records feed F4. The evidence discipline is edition-independent, which is why it is worth building before the Commission publishes its timeline.

See how it works at cliniccomply.com.au/features.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has the RACGP published the 6th Edition Standards?

Yes. The RACGP released the Standards for general practices (6th edition) on 26 August 2026. The full text is on racgp.org.au with a downloadable PDF, alongside a mapping guide to the 5th edition and a "what practices need to know" FAQ.

What edition is my practice assessed against right now?

The 5th edition. The RACGP's FAQ says transition arrangements will be communicated by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, and the Commission's National General Practice Accreditation Scheme page still describes the scheme as the framework for accreditation to the 5th edition Standards. Accrediting agencies assess against the 5th edition today.

When do I have to comply with the 6th edition?

Not yet determined. The RACGP says the Commission will publish transition and implementation arrangements under the NGPA Scheme, including timing and accreditation requirements, and that all practices undergoing accreditation will need to meet the 6th edition Standards following the determined transition period. No date has been announced. Confirm with your accrediting agency before you plan around any figure.

Is there a 12-month transition window?

No transition window length has been announced by the RACGP or the Commission. A 12-month dual-edition period appears on some third-party sites and is not in any primary source. Wait for the Commission's published arrangements.

Do I have to use AI under the 6th edition?

No. The RACGP states that the Standards do not require practices to adopt or use AI tools, and that the F11 criteria are only applicable and mandatory for practices that use them. If you do use AI tools, F11.A (safe and accountable use) and F11.B (evaluation and monitoring) apply.

Can I still use paper patient records?

Not under the 6th edition. The RACGP says paper health records are no longer acceptable and that practices must use a digital clinical information system to manage patient health information. CG1.A allows for hybrid arrangements where they are still needed, for instance for patients at residential aged care facilities, but the systems themselves must be digital. Paper records remain acceptable under the 5th edition, which is what applies until the scheme transitions.

How many standards and criteria are in the 6th edition?

Five standards: Foundations of general practice, Clinical governance, Patient participation, Continuous quality improvement, and an optional Point-of-care testing standard. The four core standards hold 35 criteria sets (F1 to F11, CG1 to CG13, PP1 to PP10, and CQI1). Counting the criteria listed in the RACGP's mapping guide gives 92 across those four standards, three of which are aspirational: F8.F, CG3.J and CQI1.C.

Does the 6th edition change the 31 December 2026 MyMedicare deadline?

No. The MyMedicare accreditation exemption still expires on 31 December 2026, and unaccredited practices lose their MyMedicare registration from 1 January 2027. A practice starting accreditation now will be assessed against the 5th edition, since that is what accrediting agencies assess today.

Which organisations accredit general practices in Australia?

Four agencies are approved under the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme: ACHS, AGPAL, Global-Mark and QPA. Your agency is the source to confirm which edition your next assessment runs against.