Medical practice cleaning in South Australia: what RACGP and SA Health expect

A GP or dental clinic in South Australia needs a written cleaning policy and a cleaning schedule that names who cleans each surface, how often, with what product, and where the record is kept. Frequently touched surfaces are cleaned at least daily and twice daily during an outbreak. Clinical contact surfaces are cleaned between patients by clinical staff. Most surfaces need detergent and water only; a TGA-listed disinfectant is added where a risk assessment says so. Clinical waste is segregated at the point it is generated and leaves the building with a licensed collector, never with the cleaner. These are the expectations set by the RACGP Infection Prevention and Control Guidelines, which accreditation assessors check against.

Updated 21 October 2026. Written by Jordan Sinclair, JC Commercial, Adelaide. Figures are market ranges checked against the sources linked in the text.

Medical practice cleaning schedule for SA: surface, frequency, product, record

The RACGP guidelines (published November 2022, replacing the 5th edition Infection Prevention and Control Standards) do not hand you a fixed timetable. They require the practice to set its own schedule from a risk assessment and to monitor it. The table below is the schedule most Adelaide practices land on when they apply that guidance. Use it as a starting point, then adjust for your own rooms.

Surface or zone	Frequency	Product class	Record kept
Frequently touched surfaces: door handles, light switches, reception counter, EFTPOS, chair arms, handrails	Daily minimum; twice daily during an outbreak and after a patient with a suspected transmissible infection	Neutral detergent; detergent plus disinfectant during an outbreak	Daily tick sheet, signed and timed
Toilet door handles, taps, flush buttons, toilet seats	Twice daily	Detergent, then disinfectant	Daily tick sheet
Clinical contact surfaces: examination couch, treatment bench, dental chair and surrounds, trolleys	Between patients by clinical staff; full clean at end of session	Detergent; TGA-listed disinfectant where contaminated or where the risk assessment requires it	Practice IPC log, clinical staff
Treatment and procedure room floors (hard, smooth surface)	Daily: HEPA-filter vacuum then damp mop	Neutral detergent (pH 6 to 8)	Daily tick sheet
Waiting room and corridors	Daily; carpet vacuumed with a HEPA-filter machine; other floors as scheduled	Detergent	Daily tick sheet
Bench tops, sinks, hand basins, toilets	Daily	Detergent; disinfectant on toilets and basins	Daily tick sheet
Reprocessing area (clean-to-dirty flow)	Daily and whenever contaminated	Detergent; no mixing with general cleaning cloths	Reprocessing log
Blood or body-fluid spill	Immediately	Spill kit: absorb, detergent clean, then disinfectant	Incident record
Clinical waste and sharps	Segregated at point of generation; removed on the licensed collector's schedule	Not a cleaning task	Collector docket or manifest

Three points in that table matter more than the rest. First, detergent does the cleaning and disinfectant does not; a disinfectant on a dirty surface is wasted. The RACGP guidance is explicit that manual cleaning with water and detergent must come before any disinfectant unless a combined product is used, and that disinfectant is required only where the risk is higher (cleaning agents and methods). Second, hard floors in treatment areas are vacuumed with a HEPA-filter machine and then damp mopped, and mops are washed and dried, never left wet in a bucket. Third, the schedule names a person for every line. "The cleaner" is not a name.

Who cleans what: practice staff versus the contractor

Clinical contact surfaces between patients are cleaned by clinical staff, because the contractor is not there at 10:40 am when a patient leaves room 3. The contractor's job is the end-of-day scheduled clean of every surface on the schedule, the floors, the toilets and the waiting area, plus the periodical work such as carpet extraction out of hours. The RACGP's monitoring guidance says contract cleaners can be required to complete a checklist of cleaning tasks, that the records can be audited for adherence, and that any discrepancy or observed problem must be reported to the staff member who oversees cleaning. Write that into the cleaning contract.

Hospitals are a different system. In South Australia, hospital cleaning is run under SA Health's Cleaning Standard for South Australian Healthcare Facilities through facilities-management contracts, with risk-rated functional areas and formal audit scores. That is not what a GP or dental clinic needs, and JC Commercial does not work in hospitals. The national environmental cleaning fact sheet for cleaners from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care is still a useful one-page induction for anyone cleaning a practice: it sets out the detergent-first rule, the contact-time rule and the high-touch list.

Colour coding and equipment

Colour coding stops a cloth that wiped a toilet seat from wiping a treatment bench. The convention most Australian practices use is red for toilets and washrooms, yellow for clinical and treatment areas, blue for general areas such as reception and offices, and green for kitchens and staff rooms. It applies to cloths, mop heads, buckets and gloves. Microfibre cloths are used flat, folded to eight faces, one face per surface, then laundered hot. Spray bottles are pre-diluted and labelled, never topped up, and nothing goes back into the stock container. Keep the chemical list short: the RACGP guidance recommends practices standardise and minimise the number of products kept on site, which also keeps the safety data sheet folder short.

Clinical waste stays with the licensed collector

Cleaners handle general waste and recycling. Clinical waste, sharps and pharmaceutical waste are segregated into the correct containers at the point they are generated, by the clinical staff who generate them, and removed by a licensed clinical waste contractor under AS/NZS 3816:2018 Management of clinical and related wastes. In South Australia, sharps containers must meet the prescribed container rules in the Environment Protection (Waste to Resources) Policy 2010, and transport is licensed by the EPA. A cleaning contractor who offers to "take the yellow bins" is offering to break the law for you. The contractor's role is to leave clinical waste bins untouched, report any overflow, and never put a hand into a bin.

What accreditation assessors ask to see

Practice accreditation against the RACGP Standards for general practices (5th edition) is assessed by agencies such as AGPAL and QPA. For dental practices, the Dental Board's registration standard points to the ADA Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control. The documents assessors ask for are consistent across both.

1. The current cleaning policy, naming staff responsibilities, scheduled and unscheduled cleaning, and how effectiveness is monitored.
2. The cleaning schedule, with a responsible person against every surface and frequency.
3. Completed cleaning records for the past months, signed and dated, with any gaps explained.
4. The contractor agreement, showing the checklist the contractor completes and how discrepancies are reported.
5. Safety data sheets for every chemical on site, and evidence the people using them were trained.
6. The spill kit, in date, and the procedure next to it.
7. The clinical waste contract and recent collection dockets.
8. Evidence that frequently touched surfaces are cleaned at the stated frequency: a morning spot check is enough.

If your contractor records every visit with a time-stamped start and finish, the tasks ticked and photographs, items 3, 4 and 8 answer themselves. If the record is a signature on a clipboard, expect follow-up questions.

How JC Commercial cleans practices

JC Commercial cleans GP, dental and allied health rooms across Adelaide, not hospitals. Every practice gets a clause-numbered scope before the first visit, built from the RACGP frequencies above and the practice's own risk assessment, with the colour code and the product list written in. Every visit is time-stamped, ticked and photographed so the record is ready for the assessor. Issues are acknowledged within 2 hours and resolved within 24 as a contract term. The company is certified to ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 and is an IICRC Certified Firm. See medical practice cleaning, aged care cleaning and washroom hygiene servicing, or read the older guide to medical centre cleaning requirements in SA.

FAQs

How often should a GP clinic be cleaned?

Every day the practice is open. Frequently touched surfaces at least daily, twice daily in an outbreak. Toilet handles and taps twice daily. Treatment room floors daily. Clinical contact surfaces between patients, by clinical staff. Other surfaces at the frequency the practice sets in its own schedule.

Do medical practices have to use disinfectant on every surface?

No. The RACGP guidance says most surfaces are cleaned with detergent and water, and that a disinfectant is used in addition to detergent only where the risk is higher, such as toilets, after a spill, after a patient with a transmissible infection, or during an outbreak. Detergent cleaning must come first.

Can the cleaning contractor remove clinical waste?

No. Clinical waste and sharps are segregated by clinical staff and removed by a licensed clinical waste contractor under AS/NZS 3816. The cleaner handles general waste only and reports overflowing clinical bins.

What cleaning records does an accreditation assessor want?

The cleaning policy, the schedule with a named person for each line, signed and dated records for recent months, the contractor's checklist and agreement, safety data sheets, the spill kit, and the clinical waste contract and dockets.

Is carpet allowed in a medical practice?

In waiting rooms and offices, yes, vacuumed with a HEPA-filter machine. Treatment and procedure rooms need hard, smooth flooring that can be mopped. The RACGP guidance says carpet should not be installed in treatment areas.

Does the same guidance apply to dental clinics?

The structure is the same: a written policy, a risk-based schedule, detergent first, disinfectant where risk requires, records kept and waste segregated. Dental practices follow the ADA Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control, which the Dental Board's registration standard points to.