Accreditation of the RACGP training programs and CPD Home

The Australian Medical Council (AMC) is an independent national standards body for medical education and training. The AMC is the delegate of the Medical Board of Australia (MBA) and is responsible for accrediting all training programs for medical practitioners, including Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

All medical specialist colleges undergo accreditation and reaccreditation on a regular basis. This is a requirement under National Health Practitioner Regulation Law. The RACGP will undergo reaccreditation in 2024 as the training programs and CPD home are currently accredited to 31 March 2025.

Health practitioner training programs must be accredited by law. Failure to have an accredited training program means that we cannot train GPs and therefore the RACGP would no longer be legally recognised as a specialist medical training college. That is why this is a significant event for the RACGP.

The AMC, after their initial accreditation of a college training program will visit on a regular basis as part of maintaining the accreditation. Depending on the results of an initial accreditation, it may be up to 10 years before a major reaccreditation visit occurs.

The last major AMC reaccreditation visit to the RACGP was in 2013. The RACGP is required to submit a monitoring report every 12 months. This report details various aspects of the training program and responds to any conditions or concerns that the AMC have.

The AMC has developed standards for specialist medical programs and criteria for accreditation of CPD homes. These along with the procedures for accreditation can be found on the AMC website.

The RACGP training standards apply to RACGP training programs, whereas the AMC standards apply to all medical colleges. The AMC standards cover many aspects of the college and its programs that do not need to be a part of the RACGP training standards. Some of these include examinations, governance, evaluation processes, policies, and training data.

The RACGP training standards are constructed in a way that embeds the AMC standards. This ensures that when training programs follow the RACGP training standards, the training program will also automatically meet the relevant AMC standards. The RACGP training standards therefore ensure that GP training programs meets its obligations and responsibilities to patients, the broader Australian community, government as well as the AMC and MBA.

The RACGP is required to submit an application for reaccreditation, demonstrating that the RACGP training programs and CPD Home meet the appropriate standards. The report is due in May 2024.

The AMC assembles an accreditation team and conducts stakeholder consultation and surveys in April. They will also provide a preliminary assessment of the programs based on the reaccreditation submission and may request further information.

The AMC will then conduct site visits between 7–16th August 2024. Some of these will be onsite, in-person, and some via videoconference at various sites. This will include meeting with key training program leadership staff, committee members, medical educators, supervisors and registrars. In the week of 19th–23rd August 2024, the AMC accreditation team will visit the National office to meet with RACGP office bearers, education and training committees, and GPs in training.

On completion of the visits, the AMC presents a report and recommendations to the Medical Board.

The RACGP receives an outcome of the assessment in January 2025.

Writing the application for reaccreditation and scheduling the site visits is a significant undertaking and will involve many hours of preparation by a broad range of staff, committee members and office bearers. It includes a significant amount of data collection and analysis, as well as writing, editing, and reviewing. The report must also go through an approval process and be endorsed by the RACGP Education Workforce Committee before it is submitted to the AMC.

As a critical event for the RACGP, preparation and planning began at least 12 months in advance. This work has been planned for, and appropriately resourced. The development of the written submission is expected to take 9– 10 months.

Yes. CPD Homes were introduced at the beginning of 2023 and the RACGP is accredited as a CPD Home. Although an extensive CPD report is being submitted in mid-2023, the CPD Home will still need to be a part of the broader 2024 reaccreditation report and visits.

In the future, CPD Home reaccreditation will be done at the same time as the rest of the AMC reaccreditation process.

Although the focus will be on training programs and CPD and therefore primarily involve the Training and Education teams, there are other areas of the college that can be involved. For example, the AMC will look at the college’s governance structure, its various committees, member services or standards and polices, especially as these relate to the specialist training programs.

• Full accreditation for a maximum of 10 years.
• Accreditation with conditions and/or recommendations.
  • A condition is something that the RACGP must do within an agreed period to maintain accreditation.
  • A recommendation is something that the RACGP should do to maintain accreditation. These need to be addressed in future reports or specific time frames.
• Failure to achieve accreditation. This is serious, but rare.

You can contact the dedicated RACGP AMC project team on amc@racgp.org.au, or access more resources via the RACGP Australian Medical Council reaccreditation 2024 Pulse page. The AMC has a series of excellent information videos covering the accreditation stages on their website. These are recommended for anyone who is involved in the reaccreditation process.