Pulse ·
New sterilisation rules for GP clinics — what this means
Standards Australia has updated the rules for how reusable medical instruments must be processed in GP practices. The key change: manual pre-cleaning is no longer acceptable — practices must acquire washer-disinfector equipment and use it before sterilising any reusable device.
Compliance is required by early 2028. RACGP is advocating for Primary Health Network grants to help practices offset equipment costs. The change does not affect endoscopy or colonoscopy, which are governed by separate standards.
The RACGP has updated its Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidelines to align with Standards Australia’s revised instrument reprocessing standard (AS 5369:2023). The change is specific, operational, and — for the practices it affects — will require investment and workflow adjustment before early 2028.
This is not the kind of headline that arrives with clinical urgency for patients. But it is one that will land in GP clinic inboxes over the coming months, and it matters more than a compliance memo usually does. How the instruments used in your consultation are processed before they reach you is an invisible part of general practice safety — and that process just got more rigorous.
What actually changes
The reprocessing of reusable medical instruments — lancets, specula, dressing forceps, procedural equipment — touches most GP clinics in some form. Under the current approach, many practices manually pre-clean instruments before autoclave sterilisation: a staff member washes them, then packages them for the cycle.
That step is no longer acceptable under the new standard. Instruments must now pass through a washer-disinfector — an automated mechanical cleaning device — before being packaged and sterilised. Manual cleaning carries inherent variability: technique differs between staff members, between shifts, between days. The washer-disinfector removes that variability from the equation and standardises the pre-cleaning step across all instrument cycles.
The compliance deadline is early 2028 — not imminent, but not distant either. Practices that don’t currently own washer-disinfector equipment will need to acquire it, and the procurement and workflow adjustment process takes time to do well.
What the standard does not affect: endoscopy, colonoscopy, or any instrument reprocessing requiring specialist technical expertise. Those procedures fall under separate standards and are not part of this guideline update.
The cost question
The case for the change is straightforward from an infection prevention standpoint. If you are a patient having a minor procedure in a GP clinic — a skin biopsy, a wound exploration, any contact with a reusable instrument — a higher-reliability pre-cleaning process is unambiguously better for you. This is a safety improvement, not a bureaucratic exercise.
The complication is resource. General practice in Australia is already carrying significant structural financial pressure, and a new equipment mandate lands differently across different practice types. A large corporate clinic can absorb the capital cost of a washer-disinfector more easily than a solo GP in a regional town. The economics of small and rural practices — where the workforce is already under distress — are not the same as those of a metropolitan group practice.
The RACGP is actively advocating for Primary Health Network grant funding to help practices offset the equipment cost. Whether that funding materialises at the scale needed is an open question. A compliance mandate that arrives without a funded implementation pathway risks either non-compliance or, in some cases, the decision to stop offering procedures altogether — an outcome that reduces patient access without improving safety.
There is also a less-discussed workforce dimension. The shift to washer-disinfectors is expected to free up considerable nurse time currently spent on manual pre-cleaning. If that time is genuinely redistributed toward patient care rather than absorbed by administrative overhead, the change has an efficiency dividend beyond the infection prevention rationale.
Both-and
This is a real tension: a clear safety improvement that creates a real resource problem for a sector under financial pressure. Both things are true.
The patient-safety case does not depend on the resource problem being resolved — the case for automated pre-cleaning is sound regardless of cost. But the resource problem does not disappear because the safety case is sound. Both deserve attention, and they operate in parallel rather than one cancelling the other.
The RACGP’s advocacy for PHN grant support is the right response from a peak body: push for the funding that makes the compliance possible, while making the safety argument clearly and publicly.
My two cents
The sterilisation cycle is an essential, invisible backstop for every clinical contact involving reusable equipment. You don’t see what happens to an instrument between the patient before you and the moment it is used in your consultation. That invisibility is precisely why standards matter: the quality check cannot come from patient observation; it must come from the system.
The new standard raises the floor on that system. By early 2028, the pre-cleaning step in instrument reprocessing in Australian GP clinics will be automated and standardised rather than manual and variable. That is a net improvement for everyone who uses general practice.
For practices navigating the transition now: RACGP has produced videos, FAQs, and supporting resources. The 2028 deadline gives planning time, but equipment procurement and workflow adjustment take longer than most change processes suggest. Starting the conversation with your PHN now — especially around any available grant support — is worthwhile.
Verdict: yes — worth knowing about if you work in or attend a GP practice that processes reusable instruments.