FAQ
Common questions.
Straightforward answers about our services, onboarding, compliance documentation, and how we work.
What is a Compliance Gap Assessment?
A fixed-fee, two-week assessment of your IT environment across 10 compliance domains — My Health Records Rules 2026, Privacy Act obligations, RACGP Standards, backup and DR, access controls, and more. You receive a written report detailing every gap, the evidence you're missing, and a remediation roadmap. The assessment fee is credited in full if you engage ClinicGuard IT within 60 days.
We already have an IT provider — do we have to switch?
No. The Gap Assessment is independent of who manages your IT — it assesses your environment, not your provider. You'll receive a written compliance report regardless of what you decide next. Many practices find the assessment surfaces gaps their current provider hasn't addressed — not because the provider is incompetent, but because compliance documentation isn't what most IT providers are built for. After the assessment, if you decide to bring ClinicGuard IT in as your managed IT provider, we handle the transition: access handover, documentation, and continuity planning so there's no disruption to the practice.
How long does onboarding take?
Our standard onboarding period is 90 days. In that time we install monitoring agents on all your devices, establish your security baseline, patch outstanding vulnerabilities, document your environment, and build out your compliance evidence library. Most clinics notice the difference within the first two weeks.
Which practice management software do you support?
Our primary platforms are Best Practice (Bp Premier), Medical Director / Pracsoft, Zedmed, Genie, and Gentu. These cover the majority of Melbourne GP and specialist practices. If your software isn't on that list, ask — we'll tell you honestly whether we can support it and at what level.
What does the 30-minute response time actually mean?
During clinic hours (7am–7pm AEST, Monday to Saturday), we respond to any support request within 30 minutes. That means a real person acknowledging your issue and beginning triage — not an automated ticket confirmation. For critical issues (full system down, clinic unable to operate), we aim to have a resolution underway within 30 minutes.
What is Essential Eight compliance?
The Essential Eight is the Australian Signals Directorate's (ASD) baseline cybersecurity framework: patching applications and operating systems, multi-factor authentication, restricting admin privileges, application control, disabling macros, user application hardening, daily backups, and restricting Office macros. We assess your practice against Essential Eight Maturity Level 1 as standard and provide a roadmap to ML2 for practices with RACGP or regulatory requirements.
Is there a lock-in contract?
No. After your 90-day onboarding period, all ClinicGuard IT engagements are month-to-month. We earn your business every month. If you want to leave, give us 30 days' notice. No exit fees, no data hostage, no difficult conversations.
Can you support multiple clinic locations?
Yes. We work with practices from single-location clinics to multi-site groups. Each location gets its own documented IT register, and we manage patching, monitoring, and compliance evidence across all sites centrally.
What compliance documentation do you actually produce?
Monthly reports covering: backup verification logs (with restore test records), access audit logs, patch status by device, incident register, DR plan review status, and a compliance scorecard against RACGP and Privacy Act requirements. These are the documents your accreditor asks for and most practices can't produce on short notice.
Do you work with practices outside Melbourne?
Our primary service area is Metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria. Most support is delivered remotely, so distance is rarely a barrier for day-to-day helpdesk. For on-site visits outside our primary area, we use a partner network and will quote travel costs transparently in advance.
What happens if my server fails overnight?
All clients have 24/7 monitoring — we'll know about a server failure before you do. We'll be working on recovery before your clinic opens. We also establish proper offsite backups and a tested disaster recovery procedure during onboarding, so a server failure becomes a recoverable event, not a clinic closure.
What if my IT provider is unavailable — is there a backup?
Yes. ClinicGuard IT maintains documented runbooks for every client environment — network diagrams, system inventories, access procedures, and recovery steps. These are held securely and are accessible to our partner network if needed. We also maintain relationships with vetted partner engineers for on-site cover and escalation. Your practice is never dependent on a single person being available.
Still have questions?
The best way to find out if ClinicGuard IT is right for your practice is a Compliance Gap Assessment — a fixed-fee, two-week engagement. The fee is credited in full if you engage us within 60 days.