How to Start a Medical Practice in Australia, Step by Step

Opening a medical practice in Australia is one of the most heavily regulated small-business undertakings in the country. Between the RACGP, the Medical Board and AHPRA, Services Australia, the OAIC, the Fair Work Ombudsman and state public health regulators, a new practice owner has to satisfy more than a hundred distinct obligations before the first patient walks in.

This guide is the procedure, in the order the lead times demand. Two steps in particular (Medicare provider numbers, and accreditation enrolment) will delay your opening or your first assessment if you leave them until you feel ready.

Before you begin

Have these decided or in hand before Step 1, because everything downstream depends on them:

• A confirmed location and lease, or at minimum a confirmed address. Medicare provider numbers are issued per location and cannot be transferred, so nothing in Step 2 can start without an address.
• Your practitioner list, including whether each is an employee or a contractor. This drives both provider number applications and your Fair Work obligations.
• Advice from a healthcare-specific accountant on entity structure. The tax, liability and succession consequences of this decision are expensive to unwind later.
• A realistic opening date, then work backwards. Three to six months from signed lease to first patient is typical.

Step 1: Choose your structure and complete business registrations

Get the legal and financial foundations right before spending money on fit-out or clinical equipment.

Choose the legal structure. Sole trader is simple but exposes personal assets. A Pty Ltd company gives limited liability and is the default for multi-practitioner practices. Partnerships are common among GP groups but need a well-drafted partnership agreement. Service trusts, where a company provides administrative services to practitioners who contract in, remain the dominant structure for established group practices, but the tax position tightened after the ATO's guidance on professional firm profit allocation.

Register for an ABN, and for GST if applicable. Most medical services are GST-free under the GST Act, but supplies outside that scope (cosmetic services, medico-legal reports, some occupational health work) attract GST. Register for GST if your GST-subject turnover will exceed $75,000 annually.

Set up payroll and superannuation. Register for PAYG withholding before you engage your first employee. Choose a payroll provider that supports Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 and, critically, handles payday super (see Step 5). Superannuation sits at 12% of ordinary time earnings.

Arrange four insurances. Professional indemnity cover is mandatory for registered practitioners under AHPRA's registration standards. Public liability is effectively required by any landlord. Workers compensation is compulsory for every employer under state legislation. Cyber cover is not legally required but is increasingly priced into the risk register for any practice holding electronic health records. Budget for all four before signing the lease.

Separate the banking, and set the retention clock. Practice banking separate from day one, cloud accounting with read-only access for your accountant. Keep tax records seven years, and clinical records longer under state health records legislation, typically seven years for adults or until a minor turns 25.

Step 2: Apply for Medicare provider numbers and your practice Minor ID

Start this the moment you have a confirmed address. This is where new practice timelines most often slip.

Register the location and get a Minor ID. Your practice location must be registered with Services Australia to bill Medicare electronically. Registration produces a Minor ID, the unique electronic identifier used to transmit claims. Without one you cannot bulk bill or claim through MBS Online.

Apply for location-specific provider numbers. Every AHPRA-registered practitioner billing Medicare at the practice needs a provider number issued for that specific location. A GP joining you from another practice needs a new number for your address; the existing one does not transfer. Allow four to six weeks, and longer if supporting documents need resubmitting. Submit at least two months before opening.

Understand assignment of benefit before you bulk bill. Patients must provide a valid assignment for each bulk-billed service. Electronic assignment through tap-and-go hardware or clinical software is now the norm, but the legal obligation is unchanged: no valid assignment, no valid claim.

Register for MyMedicare if it applies. If you will offer chronic disease management, aged care or mental health services, register for MyMedicare. It underpins a growing list of MBS items and gates eligibility for the Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program and the Workforce Incentive Program.

Set volume dashboards from day one. Medicare's 80/20 rule prohibits a GP providing 80 or more professional services on each of 20 or more days in a 12-month period, except in exceptional circumstances. Breaches trigger Practitioner Review Program action, so track it from the start rather than discovering it in arrears.

Step 3: Stand up privacy and data breach readiness before the first patient

Privacy obligations start the moment you collect health information, which for most practices is when clinical software is configured and data is migrated, not on opening day.

Write a privacy policy that describes your actual systems. The Privacy Act 1988 and its 13 Australian Privacy Principles apply to every Australian business handling health information regardless of turnover. The policy must be publicly available (website and waiting room) and cover what you collect, how you use and disclose it, how patients access and correct records, and how complaints are handled. A generic template will not survive scrutiny: it has to reflect the clinical software, cloud providers and referral pathways you actually use.

Build a notifiable data breach response plan. If a breach is likely to result in serious harm you must notify affected individuals and the OAIC as soon as practicable. Make sure at least two people know how to execute the plan. Our guide to healthcare data breach obligations covers the decision points, and how to respond to a notifiable data breach is the procedure itself.

Check your state legislation. Victoria's Health Records Act 2001 and NSW's Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 add obligations on top of the federal Privacy Act. Other states rely primarily on federal rules for private practices, but their public health legislation imposes mandatory reporting and coroner notification duties that cross over.

Configure My Health Record deliberately. If you will use My Health Record, register through the operator portal and comply with the My Health Records Act 2012. Understand sharing by default: practitioners must now actively decide not to upload eligible documents, which changes consent workflows and clinical software configuration.

Know your litigation exposure. The statutory tort for serious invasion of privacy lets individuals sue directly without showing financial loss. Healthcare is squarely in scope and the tort is uncapped, which shifts privacy from a purely regulatory risk to a direct liability one.

Step 4: Build clinical governance, infection control and emergency management

This is the stream that takes longest to stand up properly, so start it early and spread it across the first 18 months.

Write the infection prevention and control program. It must cover hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfection, instrument reprocessing, cold chain management, sharps and clinical waste, staff immunisation, and transmission-based precautions. If you reprocess reusable instruments, sterilisation processes must be validated with documented evidence. Note that AS 5369:2023 has superseded AS/NZS 4187:2014 for reprocessing reusable medical devices, so build against the current standard rather than older template language.

Write the emergency management plan. Cover medical emergencies, fire, evacuation and business continuity. Resuscitation equipment including a defibrillator must be accessible, maintained and checked on a documented schedule. Staff need CPR and anaphylaxis training at RACGP-specified intervals.

Set up the five evidence pillars on day one. Every RACGP criterion reduces to one of: written policies and procedures, meeting minutes and documented decisions, audit cycles and quality improvement, incident and complaints registers, and training and CPD records. The most common reason new practices fail a first assessment is having the policies but never starting the other four. Start logging incidents and near-misses from week one, even when the register looks empty.

Apply information security controls. The Standards incorporate expectations mirroring the RACGP Computer and Information Security Standards. Our cybersecurity compliance checklist covers the controls, from multi-factor authentication through to the 72-hour ransomware payment reporting rules.

Step 5: Get Fair Work classifications, contracts and payday super right

Employment compliance in healthcare has shifted sharply, and a practice opening now faces a materially different landscape from one that opened in 2022.

Classify every role correctly. Practice managers, nurses, receptionists and allied health assistants almost all fall under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 (MA000027). Employed medical practitioners fall under the Medical Practitioners Award 2020. Misclassification is the single biggest source of underpayment claims, and the Fair Work Commission's gender undervaluation decision repriced significant HPSS roles, so classify against the current structure rather than an inherited spreadsheet. How to audit award classifications is the procedure.

Treat underpayment as a criminal exposure, not an accounting error. Intentional underpayment of wages or superannuation is a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act, and the Fair Work Ombudsman has explicitly prioritised healthcare as an enforcement sector.

Build payday super in from day one. Employers must pay superannuation on the same cycle as wages, with payment to the fund required within seven days of payday. For a practice opening now, configure this at setup rather than migrating under pressure later. See the 1 July 2026 employer changes for the detail.

Make on-call expectations explicit. The right to disconnect applies to all Australian employers. Healthcare's informal culture of texting staff about shift changes and expecting after-hours email responses carries risk if employees exercise the right to refuse. Put on-call expectations in contracts and position descriptions, and pay an on-call loading where it applies.

Keep the paperwork. Every employee, permanent, casual, part-time or fixed-term, needs a written contract specifying classification, hours, pay, leave and notice. Keep signed contracts, position descriptions, induction records, training records and performance reviews for at least seven years. How to onboard staff compliantly covers the sequence.

Step 6: Enrol for accreditation early, but book the assessment late

This is the step new owners most often get backwards.

Enrol with an accreditation agency in the first three months. The agencies recognised for RACGP accreditation are QPA, AGPAL and GPA Accreditation Plus. Enrolling is not booking your assessment. It gets you the Standards, the agency's pre-audit tools and their gap analysis resources, so you know which criteria you are building evidence against from day one.

Book the first on-site assessment for months 12 to 18. The Standards require evidence of sustained operation. A practice at month six cannot demonstrate a full clinical audit cycle, a patient feedback loop, a year of meeting minutes or a mature incident register. Attempting to accredit early produces a non-conformity list, not a certificate. Month 12 is the earliest realistic date and months 15 to 18 are more comfortable. See getting started with RACGP accreditation for the full path.

Self-assess before you book. Run a RACGP self-assessment at around month 9 to 12, close what you can, and document why anything still open is genuinely not yet demonstrable rather than neglected.

What good looks like

By opening day:

• Entity, ABN, GST, PAYG and workers compensation registrations complete, and all four insurances bound.
• Minor ID issued and every treating practitioner holds a provider number for this address.
• Privacy policy published, consent forms in use, breach response plan written, privacy officer nominated.
• Infection control and emergency management programs written, with sterilisation validated if you reprocess.
• Written contracts with correct award classifications for every employee, payroll configured for payday super.

By month 18:

• A full clinical audit cycle completed, a patient feedback loop that has run at least once, twelve months of meeting minutes, and a live incident and complaints register with real entries.
• Enrolled with an agency since month three, self-assessed, gaps closed, and the first on-site assessment completed.

Common mistakes: applying for provider numbers after the fit-out is finished, treating the privacy policy as a template exercise, booking accreditation at month six, and classifying staff against an award structure that has since been repriced.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to open a medical practice in Australia?

Three to six months from signed lease to first patient is typical. The timeline is driven by fit-out and equipment (two to four months), Medicare provider number processing (four to six weeks), clinical software setup and data migration (three to six weeks), staff recruitment and onboarding (four to eight weeks), and policy development. Accreditation readiness takes a further 12 to 18 months beyond opening day.

What compliance is required to open a medical practice in Australia?

Five parallel streams: business and tax registrations (ABN, GST, PAYG, workers compensation, insurance), Medicare registration including a practice Minor ID and location-specific provider numbers, Privacy Act and notifiable data breach readiness, clinical governance foundations (infection control, emergency management, incident reporting), and Fair Work compliance (award classifications, written contracts, payday super).

Do I need a Medicare provider number to open a medical practice?

If your practice will bill Medicare in any form, yes. Each treating practitioner needs a provider number issued for the specific location where they bill, and numbers are not transferable between addresses. The practice also needs a Minor ID from Services Australia for electronic claiming. Both take four to six weeks, so submit at least two months before opening.

When should a new practice apply for RACGP accreditation?

Enrol with an agency in the first three months so you have the Standards and pre-audit resources, but book the first on-site assessment for months 12 to 18. Assessors require evidence of twelve months of sustained operation, including a completed clinical audit cycle, meeting minutes, an incident register and a patient feedback loop, none of which can be produced retrospectively.

How much does it cost to set up a medical practice in Australia?

Costs vary widely with location and fit-out. For a two- to four-room metropolitan GP practice, typical first-year costs include fit-out and equipment ($150,000 to $400,000), clinical software and IT ($8,000 to $20,000 setup plus $500 to $2,000 per month), insurances ($8,000 to $25,000 annually), legal and accounting ($15,000 to $40,000), and six to nine months of wage runway. Confirm current figures at the time you budget, as these move.

What awards cover medical practice employees?

Practice managers, nurses, receptionists, allied health assistants and health information managers are covered by the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020. Employed medical practitioners are covered by the Medical Practitioners Award 2020. Misclassification is the largest single source of underpayment claims in healthcare, so classify against the current structure rather than an inherited one.

Which privacy obligations apply before we see the first patient?

From the moment you collect health information, the Privacy Act 1988 and the 13 Australian Privacy Principles apply. Before opening you need a published privacy policy describing your actual systems, valid consent forms, a notifiable data breach response plan, a nominated privacy officer, and staff trained on access and correction requests. Victoria and NSW add state obligations.

Can a solo GP follow this same process?

Yes. Every step applies, but the volume is smaller: one provider number, one set of contracts if you employ reception staff, and a shorter policy set. The two steps a solo practice most often underestimates are the accreditation evidence trail in Step 4, which takes the same twelve months regardless of size, and the provider number lead time in Step 2.

Last reviewed 4 August 2026