The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care wants to see good clinical governance become a pillar of organisational culture.
New guidance on clinical governance from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care emphasises leadership, board accountability, and workforce wellbeing, with the commission calling for less reactivity.
The 2026 National Model for Clinical Governance replaces the almost decade-old 2017 National Model Clinical Governance Framework.
While the old model was not broken per se, the new document acknowledged that some health services were finding it difficult to “implement systems that engage the workforce and make a difference to the care that patients receive”.
“Our aim is to reshape Australia’s approach to clinical governance, shifting the main focus from complying with accreditation requirements to building the culture of the whole organisation to support the delivery of high-quality care every day,” ACSQHC CEO, Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan wrote in the foreword.
The new model applies to anyone who is involved in delivering healthcare.
There are six “pillars” underpinning the new model:
- Leading systems and organisational culture;
- Partnering with patients and carers;
- Building a healthy workforce culture;
- Enabling high-quality and integrated clinical practice;
- Managing and reducing risk;
- Using data for better care.
Health services are meant to then apply these pillars “in a way that meets the needs of their organisation, no matter their size, type or location”.
An accompanying guide to practical implementation provides slightly more information.
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It steps organisations through the process of comparing their governance system and protocol against the new national model to identify gaps, coming up with goals and rolling out implementation plans.
Alongside examples of good governance, the National Model for Clinical Governance also includes certain “warning signs” that an organisation is straying from patient-centred care.
Examples include:
- Board meeting agendas with a disproportionate focus on legal and financial matters;
- Boards that do not interact with clinicians and have no clinician representation;
- Patient advocates who are only engaged to satisfy representation requirements rather than to meaningly inform clinical governance;
- Organisations with a high priority on meeting financial targets, at the expense of workforce wellbeing;
- Digital health systems which do not support clinical workflows;
- Failures to respond to incident reports.
Read the full 2026 National Model for Clinical Governance here.
