Staff & doctor agreements for GP practices — what to cover

This is not legal advice, and these are not templates. It is a plain-English guide to help you brief a professional and know what to ask for. Agreements — doctor service agreements especially — must be drafted or reviewed by a solicitor who knows health law and the current payroll-tax position in your state. A wrong clause can cost real money (see the payroll-tax section).

Start here

Two different documents

Most practices need two separate kinds of agreement, and they are not interchangeable:

Employment contracts — for employed staff: practice nurses, reception, the practice manager, and employed doctors. Governed mainly by the national Fair Work system and the relevant modern award (for example the Health Professionals and Support Services Award, the Nurses Award, or the Medical Practitioners Award).
Service (facility) agreements — for GPs engaged as independent contractors. The doctor runs their own practice and pays the clinic a service/facility fee for rooms, staff and systems. This is the document with the payroll-tax and sham-contracting traps.

Where clinic-admin fits: clinic-admin doesn’t draft or store the legal wording of these for you, but it tracks that each staff member and doctor has a current signed agreement on file, with a review-date reminder — so nothing quietly lapses. The drafting stays with your solicitor.

Checklist A

What a staff employment contract should cover

A prep checklist to walk through with your adviser — not a substitute for one.

Position, duties, reporting line and location
Employment type — full-time, part-time or casual — and ordinary hours
The correct modern award named, with classification and pay point
Rate of pay, casual loading, penalties, allowances and superannuation
Leave entitlements (annual, personal/carer’s, long service, parental)
Probation period and notice of termination
Confidentiality and privacy obligations (patient information)
Policies the employee must follow (incorporated by reference, not pay-affecting)
Workplace health & safety, and the practice’s code of conduct
Immunisation / credential requirements for the role, where relevant

Checklist B

What a doctor service agreement should cover

The higher-risk document. Get this one drafted by a health-law solicitor — the wording directly affects your payroll-tax exposure.

That the doctor is engaged as an independent contractor running their own practice (not an employee)
The service/facility fee the doctor pays the practice, and what it buys (rooms, staff, systems, billing)
Flow of funds — who collects patient/Medicare fees, whose account they land in, and how the service fee is deducted (this detail drives payroll-tax treatment)
That the doctor controls their own clinical decisions, hours and patient list
Who holds the Medicare provider number and billing responsibility
Ownership of and access to medical records (and what happens on exit)
Professional indemnity — the doctor carries their own
Restraint / non-solicitation terms, kept reasonable and enforceable
Term, notice and what happens to patients and records when the doctor leaves
GST treatment of the service fee

The payroll-tax trap: if the agreement (and the actual money flow) looks like the practice is paying the doctor, state revenue offices can treat the arrangement as a “relevant contract” and levy payroll tax on those payments — potentially backdated. A template off the internet is exactly how practices get this wrong. See the next section.

The big one

Payroll tax on doctor payments — where it stands

Since the Thomas and Naaz rulings, state revenue offices have treated many GP contractor arrangements as “relevant contracts”, making the practice liable for payroll tax (roughly 4.75%–6.85%, depending on the state) on payments to doctors. Since then most states have introduced GP-specific concessions — but they are conditional, and a poorly structured agreement can cost you the concession.

Current position, as at 2026 — confirm with your state revenue office, as this area keeps changing:

State	GP payments	Key condition
QLD	Exempt (GPs)	In law from Feb 2025; fees must flow through the practice ledger, not direct to the doctor. Specialists/allied health not covered.
NSW	Rebate, not exemption	Bulk-billing of ~80% metro / 70% regional required; audit pause has ended.
VIC	Partial exemption	From 1 Jul 2025; exempt share tracks the bulk-billed / fully-funded proportion. Private billing is taxed.
SA	Bulk-billed exempt	From 1 Jul 2024; amnesty ended — non-registrants face retrospective exposure.
ACT	Exemption (designated practices)	From 1 Jul 2025; bulk-billed / DVA / workers’ comp services.
WA	No “relevant contracts” rule	Common-law relationship test; ~$1M threshold means most GPs aren’t caught.
TAS	No enacted concession	Standard harmonised rules apply (~$1.25M threshold); election promises not yet legislated.
NT	No medical-specific rule	$2.5M threshold from 1 Jul 2025; most small practices under it.

Two things to hold onto: (1) these concessions are mostly GP-specific and conditional — specialists, allied health and privately-billed work are often still exposed; (2) payroll tax is separate from the ATO/Fair Work contractor question — a doctor can be a genuine contractor and still generate payroll-tax “wages” for the practice. This is why the service agreement’s wording and your actual money flow both matter.

Don’t get this wrong

Employee or contractor? The test changed

From 26 August 2024, under the Closing Loopholes changes, the Fair Work test for whether someone is an employee or a contractor looks at the “real substance, practical reality and true nature” of the whole relationship — not just the words in the contract. Calling someone a contractor doesn’t make them one.

Getting it wrong is sham contracting, which carries penalties and back-payment of entitlements (leave, super, award rates). The safest path is an agreement drafted to match how the relationship actually works in practice.

Official: Fair Work Ombudsman — Independent contractors

Where to get the real thing

Resources & templates

Reputable places to get proper templates, or to have an agreement drafted:

Fair Work Ombudsman — free, government employment contract template and the Pay and Conditions Tool (award rates). Good starting point for employee contracts.
AMA (Australian Medical Association) — members can access template contracts and doctor service agreements written for medical practices.
AAPM (Australian Association of Practice Management) — practice-management resources and templates.
RACGP — running-a-practice guidance, including employment and engagement resources.
Your medical defence organisation (MDO) — many provide member templates and will review a service agreement.
A health-law solicitor — essential for a doctor service agreement, to get the payroll-tax and contractor wording right for your state.

Use a free or member template as a starting point, then have it reviewed for your situation. For a doctor service agreement, don’t stop at the template — the payroll-tax structure is worth a solicitor’s hour.

More guides

🏥 Opening a GP clinic

Interactive checklist for setting up a new practice end to end.

🕒 Tracking staff hours

Log casual hours by QR, total each fortnight, check against Xero Me.

📋 RACGP accreditation

How clinic-admin maps to the RACGP Standards, with an evidence checklist.

Official sources

Check current detail here

Fair Work Ombudsman — Independent contractors (employee vs contractor, sham contracting)
Fair Work Ombudsman — templates (employment contract, Pay and Conditions Tool)
Your state revenue office for the current payroll-tax position (QRO, Revenue NSW, SRO Victoria, RevenueSA, ACT Revenue, RevenueWA)
RACGP — Running a practice
AMA and AAPM for member contract templates

Want the tracking handled? clinic-admin records who has a current agreement on file and reminds you before a review date — alongside AHPRA, CPR and indemnity. See clinic-admin.com or email info@clinic-admin.com.