Your website is advertising
If you are registered with a National Board, your advertising is governed by section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. A website is advertising. So is a Google Business Profile, a social media page and a brochure in the waiting room. The rule does not care which channel the words are in.
Section 133 makes it an offence to advertise a regulated health service in a way that:
- is false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be;
- offers a gift, discount or inducement without stating the terms;
- uses a testimonial about the service;
- creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment; or
- encourages the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of the service.
Most of the trouble on practice websites comes from the third and fourth of those.
No testimonials
A testimonial is a statement about the clinical service from someone who used it. A patient quote on your home page is one. A star-rating widget that pulls reviews onto your site is one. A before-and-after story written in the patient's words is one.
The published guidance draws the line at control. Reviews on a platform you do not control are treated differently from reviews you put on your own site. The working rule is simple. Do not put patient reviews on your website. Do not embed a widget that does it for you. Do not ask for reviews in a way that steers what gets written.
No unreasonable expectation of benefit
This is the limb that catches ordinary marketing language. Words to remove from a practice website:
- Pain-free. Nobody can promise it. The sentence is a guarantee you cannot keep.
- Guaranteed, permanent, cure. Same problem.
- Best, leading, number one. Unverifiable, and read as misleading.
- Any promise about results that a reasonable patient would take as an expectation of their own outcome.
Write what the treatment is, who it is usually for, what a first appointment involves and what the evidence says, in plain terms. That is allowed. It is also what a patient searching at 11pm wants to read.
Titles you have not been endorsed for
Elsewhere in the National Law, certain titles are protected. Do not describe yourself or your practice as a specialist, or use a specialist title, unless the relevant Board has endorsed or registered you in that specialty. This is one of the easiest things for a competitor to report and one of the hardest to argue after the fact.
Research from published sources
I build websites in regulated categories. A build in one includes a compliance review of the copy, priced into the quote. The review takes time and it is not optional.
I am not your lawyer. Everything above is research from published sources, written so you can spot the obvious problems on your own site this afternoon. Before you publish anything, confirm it with your indemnity insurer. They have a phone line for this. They would rather hear from you before the page goes live.