Preparing for accreditation, counted back from the date.

If your practice has been operating for at least 12 months and most policies exist in some form, four weeks is realistic with a structured prep plan. If foundational documents are missing, plan for six to eight weeks. The bottleneck is rarely writing policies (templates handle most of that). It is collecting the live evidence: incident logs, meeting minutes, audit cycles, vendor documentation, and staff acknowledgement records.

RACGP 5th Edition surveyors look for evidence of the Standards in live operation. That means policies that exist AND are followed: signed-off privacy policy, infection control logs with sterilisation validation, NDB breach response plan with rehearsed scenarios, incident and near-miss register with documented outcomes, clinical audit cycle with at least one completed iteration, staff CPD records, patient feedback with documented responses, and vendor documentation for every external system that touches health information.

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care approves four accrediting agencies under the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme: the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), the AGPAL Group of Companies, Global-Mark and Quality Practice Accreditation (QPA). All four assess against the same RACGP Standards for general practices. The differences are in agency fees, surveyor style, online portal experience and turnaround times. The evidence required is identical, so a practice that is ready for one is ready for all four.

Most practices do not. Consultants charge for an accreditation prep engagement, and they spend the bulk of that time on tasks that are template-driven: writing policies, building registers, structuring the evidence pack. ClinicComply replaces the structural work. You keep the consultant for strategic advice and clinical governance review if you want a second pair of eyes.

Three things, in order. First, the RACGP 5th Edition checklist shows the status of every item, so you can see exactly what is missing. Second, a template library that closes documentation gaps, with a review date and a reminder on each policy. Third, the readiness report, exported as a PDF, states where the practice stands, and the evidence pack exports as a ZIP of the documents filed against each checklist item.

The four approved accrediting agencies (ACHS, AGPAL, Global-Mark and QPA) generally allow practices to request a short extension before the visit if there is a defensible reason (staff illness, IT system change, recent practice transition). Extensions are not guaranteed and the agency will usually expect a written plan showing how the additional time will be used. Do not rely on them. Plan to be ready four weeks before the visit, not on the day.

Yes. The platform covers RACGP 5th Edition for general practice, NDIS Practice Standards (Core Module) for registered NDIS providers, Privacy Act and NDB obligations, and IT vendor documentation. All frameworks live in a single evidence library so practices that span both general practice and NDIS supports do not have to duplicate work.