On 26 August 2026 the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners published the sixth edition of its Standards for general practices, the first full rewrite since 2017. In a GP clinic, the Standards are what an accreditation surveyor works through, and the reason a practice keeps the policies, registers and evidence it keeps.

Someone has to carry that. In most practices it is the practice manager. If you already run a practice, the sixth edition changes what sits in your evidence folder. If you are thinking about moving into practice management as a career, it is a clear window into what the job is made of.

The sixth edition is organised into four standards, plus an optional fifth for practices that carry out point-of-care testing.

Terminology changed with it. What the fifth edition called indicators are now criteria, and the requirements underneath them are sub-criteria. According to the RACGP, the new framework is focused on outcomes, with criteria setting out what a practice is expected to achieve rather than prescribing how to achieve it. Aspirational criteria are labelled as such and are not required for accreditation.

So a small solo clinic and a large multi-site group can meet the same criterion in different ways, and each has to be able to explain its own approach. That is a different skill from following a template.

The sixth edition introduces a criteria set for artificial intelligence with no equivalent in the fifth edition. It covers the safe and accountable use of AI, and the evaluation and monitoring of that use. A separate new criterion covers the governance of digital health technologies more broadly, taking in telehealth, patient portals, remote monitoring and secure messaging.

This is the change most likely to catch a practice off guard, because AI arrived in general practice faster than the paperwork did. Ambient scribes are now common in Australian consulting rooms. Under the sixth edition, a practice using them needs to show how patients are told and consent is obtained, how clinicians stay accountable for decisions supported by an AI tool, how patient data is handled, and how the tool is reviewed over time.

In practical terms that comes down to a documented process, a consent step, a review date and a named owner. It is work, and it lands on the practice manager. Our guide to the RACGP Standards for practice managers covers how the fifth edition worked, which is a useful baseline for reading what has moved.

Paper-based systems on their own are no longer accepted. Hybrid arrangements are still recognised, such as care delivered in residential aged care, but a practice’s own system needs to be digital.

Record content has been tightened alongside it. Coded health summaries and a recorded allergy status are both expected, and consultations and clinical communications belong in the patient’s record.

Cyber security sits with information continuity and recovery under the Foundations standard, and it has been expanded. If your practice has never written down what happens when the clinical system goes offline, that is a gap worth closing. Our guide to practice management software in Australia covers the systems side in more depth.

New criteria cover climate resilience, sustainability strategies, and sustainability leadership and accountability, and the theme runs through several of the standards rather than sitting in one corner. Monitoring of environmental performance now sits under continuous quality improvement, with environmental impact measurement as an aspirational criterion.

Accountability is the part to act on first. A practice needs someone whose job includes this, which is a name against a responsibility, exactly the kind of thing a practice manager sets up.

Small practices are not expected to start with a formal programme. RACGP explanatory material does not prescribe particular actions, and reducing energy use, cutting waste and choosing better suppliers all count.

Several criteria in the planning and governance area are new, and they are practice-manager work almost by definition:

Strategic and operational planning were already there in some form, but both have been expanded. Informed consent for procedures and treatments is new under the patient participation standard, and results, recalls and reminders have been strengthened around documenting each attempt to contact a patient.

As a list it looks like more paperwork. As a job description it is why practice management is a career rather than a set of admin tasks.

Not yet. The Standards are published, but the accreditation timetable is not set. RACGP has said implementation arrangements under the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme will be communicated by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Practices will need to meet the sixth edition after a transition period, and the detail of that period is what to watch for.

That gap is useful. Five things are worth doing now, before any deadline is announced:

Practices mid-way through an accreditation cycle have a natural window for this work. Our explainer on the GP practice accreditation cycle sets out how that rhythm runs.

Interested in the role that turns a new set of Standards into a working practice? Explore the HLT57715 Diploma of Practice Management, delivered 100% online and self-paced over 12 months with daily intakes, or read the practice management career guide.

TalentMed Pty Ltd, RTO 22151. Nationally recognised training delivered online across Australia. This article summarises publicly available material about the RACGP Standards for general practices sixth edition and is not a substitute for the published Standards or accreditation advice.