What the RACGP Standards Actually Ask of Your Cleaning (5th and 6th Edition)

Ask ten practice managers what the RACGP Standards say about cleaning and you will hear ten versions, most of them stricter than the real thing and a few of them looser. This post sets out what the documents actually ask for, where to find it, and what changed when the 6th edition arrived. We are a cleaning company, not an accreditation agency, so treat this as a guide to the source material rather than a substitute for it.

Three documents, one system

The RACGP Standards for general practices. These are the standards a practice is assessed against for accreditation. The 5th edition has been in use for years. The RACGP released the 6th edition on 26 August 2026.

The RACGP Infection prevention and control guidelines. Released in November 2022, they replaced the older Infection prevention and control standards and hold the detail: how to clean, how often, with what. Section 9, Cleaning, laundry and waste management, is the part that matters most for your cleaner.

The national guidelines. The Australian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Infection in Healthcare sit behind both and are what the RACGP guidance draws on.

In short, the Standards say you must have a system, and the guidelines describe what a good system looks like.

Under the 5th edition

The cleaning requirements sit mainly in Criterion GP4.1: Infection prevention and control, including sterilisation. In summary, the practice needs:

a written, practice-specific policy that sets out its infection control processes
at least one clinical team member with primary responsibility for coordinating infection prevention and control
every member of the team managing cross-infection risk, including safe storage and disposal of clinical waste and sharps, and safe management of blood and body fluid spills

The criterion does not list cleaning frequencies. Those come from the guidelines.

Under the 6th edition

The 6th edition reorganises the Standards, and cleaning now shows up in two places within the Clinical governance standard.

CG9: Infection prevention and control, including reprocessing. The criteria keep the same shape as before: a written practice-specific infection control policy (CG9.A), an infection prevention and control coordinator from the clinical team (CG9.B), the whole team managing cross-infection risk in line with current Australian guidelines (CG9.C), and patients told how to avoid spreading disease (CG9.D). The guidance says the policy should cover environmental cleaning of clinical and non-clinical areas, waste management, and spills.

CG10: Practice environment. This is where cleaning becomes explicit. The practice should have a cleaning policy aligned with the RACGP's Infection prevention and control guidelines, identifying:

responsibilities for cleaning the practice
work health and safety issues
procedures for routine scheduled cleaning, unscheduled cleaning, and monitoring

That last item matters. Monitoring means the practice can show that cleaning happened and was checked, not just that a schedule exists on paper.

Which edition will you be assessed against?

For an initial period after release, practices can choose to be assessed against either the 5th or the 6th edition. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care sets the transition arrangements, and your accrediting agency will confirm which edition applies to your next visit. Either way, the cleaning requirements point to the same guidelines, so the work is the same.

What the guidelines ask of the cleaning schedule

Section 9 of the infection prevention and control guidelines says a practice's cleaning schedule should specify:

the staff responsible for cleaning
the surfaces that need cleaning, which should be all of them, so nothing falls between the gaps
the frequency
the method
the products and equipment to be used

The level of cleaning is meant to be decided by risk: how likely a surface is to be contaminated, which organisms are likely, and how vulnerable the people touching it are. The guidelines give worked examples, such as consulting room door handles cleaned daily and toilet door handles twice daily, more often during an outbreak.

If your cleaning is contracted out

The guidelines speak directly to practices that use a contract cleaner. The practice should make sure the cleaner understands their role in the practice's infection prevention and control (when, how and why each surface and piece of equipment is cleaned) and should document the arrangement: frequencies and methods, staffing, equipment, monitoring and auditing, and how the service is managed.

The responsibility stays with the practice. A good cleaner makes it easy to meet. In practice that means your cleaner should give you:

a written scope per room that matches your schedule
their product list and safety data sheets
records of attendance: who was there and when. Ours sign in and out of every visit on our app inside a geofence around the practice, with a photo.
inspection results. Our supervisors score each site every three weeks and share the photos.
evidence their cleaners have been trained for a clinical environment

What the Standards do not say

They do not require hospital-grade disinfectant on every surface every night. Detergent and water is the routine standard for most surfaces, with disinfectant where the risk calls for it.
They do not name products or brands.
They do not require a particular cleaning company, certification or contract length.
They do not move responsibility to the cleaner. The policy, the coordinator and the evidence belong to the practice.

Where to start

If your policy was last touched before the 2022 guidelines came out, start there. Our next posts cover preparing for accreditation and writing the cleaning policy and schedule itself.

If you would like a cleaner who arrives with the scope, records and inspections already built in, see medical cleaning Melbourne or ask for a walkthrough. We are independently certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and AS/NZS 4801; the accreditations page has the details.