AHPRA advertising guidelines for your clinic website

As far as the regulator is concerned, your clinic website is one big ad. Under the AHPRA advertising guidelines, the homepage and service pages count as advertising. So do the blog, the FAQs, the team bios, the image captions and the reviews widget. Most owners picture advertising as the paid ads on Google or social media, so this one catches people out.

This guide explains what the advertising rules for regulated health services mean for the words and images on a clinic website. It’s general information to help you ask good questions. It is not legal advice. A practice with a specific concern should speak to a health law adviser.

Who do the AHPRA advertising guidelines apply to?

The AHPRA advertising guidelines apply to anyone who advertises a regulated health service. That includes the practitioner, the practice, its owners and the agency or freelancer who writes the website. The rules come from section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. If your website advertises a regulated health service, the rules apply to it.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) works with the National Boards that register practitioners. Those professions include medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, psychology, occupational therapy, chiropractic, optometry and nursing, among others. AHPRA and the Boards publish guidelines that explain how section 133 works in practice.

The key point is who is covered. It doesn’t matter who wrote the page. If the page advertises a regulated health service, the person or business behind it carries the responsibility.

What does section 133 prohibit?

Section 133 sets 5 limits on advertising a regulated health service. It must not mislead or use testimonials. It must not offer inducements without terms. And it must not create unreasonable expectations or encourage unnecessary use of health services. Each of those rules shapes what a clinic website can say, from the hero line to the reviews widget.

Advertising a regulated health service must not:

• be false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be;
• offer a gift, discount or inducement without stating the terms and conditions of the offer;
• use testimonials or purported testimonials about the service;
• create an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment; or
• directly or indirectly encourage the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services.

Each of those lines has practical effects on a website. Most breaches aren’t deliberate. They come from copy written in the same persuasive style as any other business website.

Can a clinic website show patient testimonials?

A clinic website can’t show testimonials about the clinical side of care. That means symptoms, diagnosis, treatment or outcomes. Comments about the non-clinical experience, such as friendly staff or easy parking, are generally treated differently. Review widgets need care, because they can republish clinical comments on your own advertising without you noticing.

The testimonial rule is the one most practices trip over. Testimonials are standard on almost every other kind of business website, so it feels natural to add them.

Under the guidelines, a testimonial is a statement about a clinical aspect of care. “The physio fixed my back pain in 3 sessions” is a testimonial. So is a star rating shown next to a treatment name, a “patient story” case study, and a video of someone describing their recovery.

Comments about the non-clinical experience are generally treated differently. “The reception team were friendly and the rooms were easy to find” talks about the service experience. It doesn’t describe a clinical outcome.

Two practical points follow for a website:

1. Don’t publish clinical testimonials on your own site. That includes embedding a reviews feed that shows them automatically.
2. Be careful with review widgets. Pulling in your Google reviews looks harmless, but you are choosing to republish them on your own advertising. If some describe clinical outcomes, the widget republishes those too.

AHPRA publishes a testimonial tool that walks through examples. It’s worth a read before you add any reviews to your site.

What claims can a health service page make?

A health service page can describe what happens, who the patient sees and what it costs. It should avoid promising an outcome. Phrases like “lasting relief” or “we will fix the problem” create an expectation of benefit. Results vary between people, and an unreasonable expectation of benefit is a breach of section 133.

The second area to watch is what the copy says will happen. Lines like “get back to full strength” or “proven results” promise an outcome too.

A better way to write a service page is to describe what the practitioner does. Leave out what the patient will get. Cover:

• what an initial appointment involves;
• who the patient will see and what their qualifications are;
• how long it takes and what it costs;
• what happens after, including referral where that is appropriate.

That kind of page is safer. It’s usually more useful too, because it answers the questions people have before they book. It’s the approach our website copywriting team takes for practices.

Evidence, comparisons and superlatives

Claims about how well a treatment works need acceptable evidence behind them. The guidelines expect the kind of evidence a regulator would accept. A single study or a supplier’s brochure won’t do. If you can’t point to the evidence, don’t make the claim.

Comparisons are another risk. Saying your approach is better than another practice’s, or better than seeing a GP, invites a misleading comparison. Superlatives carry the same risk. Words like “leading”, “best”, “top” and “most advanced” are claims you would need to prove.

Can a practitioner call themselves a specialist?

Only some practitioners can call themselves a specialist. In some professions, “specialist” is a protected title reserved for practitioners with specialist registration. A bio that calls someone a “specialist in sports injuries” may breach the rules, even with years of experience in that area. “Has a particular interest in” or “focuses on” is the safer wording.

Protected titles under the National Law can only be used by practitioners who hold the relevant registration. The word “specialist” is the most common trap on team pages.

Where a practitioner uses the title “Dr” and is not a registered medical practitioner, the bio should make their profession clear.

Can a clinic website name prescription medicines?

A clinic website can’t promote a prescription medicine by name to the public. That rule comes from the therapeutic goods laws, which the TGA enforces. It applies in blog posts labelled as education too, and a general disclaimer doesn’t change it. A clinic can describe the consultation it offers instead.

Many clinics need to think about these rules alongside AHPRA’s. Prescription-only medicines can’t be advertised to the public in Australia.

A clinic can describe the consultation it offers. It can’t sell the substance that may or may not be prescribed at the end of it. If your practice works in this area, our AHPRA and TGA compliance service reviews each page against both sets of guidelines. Written to the guidelines by our copywriting team. Not legal advice.

Images and before and after photos

The rules apply to images as much as words. Before and after photos, retouched images and graphs of outcomes can all create unreasonable expectations. The guidelines for cosmetic procedures are stricter still. If your site uses clinical imagery, it needs the same review as the copy.

Privacy is part of the same review

A health practice website also collects health information. It usually arrives through booking forms, intake forms and enquiry forms. That brings in the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, which treat health information as sensitive.

Forms should say what is collected and why. They should link to a privacy policy written for a health practice. And they should never send form contents to advertising platforms. The OAIC’s 2026 decisions on health websites make the same point about pixels: none on health pages without express opt-in for that pixel. Getting this right belongs in the same review as the copy.

How do you check your clinic website against the guidelines?

Read your website as if you were the regulator. Look for clinical testimonials, promised results, superlatives and protected titles. Check offers for clear terms, search for named prescription medicines and look at before and after images. Any page that raises one of these flags needs attention before you spend more on ads.

Open your website and work through this list.

1. Are there testimonials or reviews that mention symptoms, treatment or results?
2. Does any page promise or imply a result, a timeline or a cure?
3. Are there words like “best”, “leading”, “expert” or “specialist”?
4. Are there offers or discounts without clear terms?
5. Is any prescription medicine named anywhere, including the blog?
6. Do team bios use titles the practitioner isn’t registered to use?
7. Are there before and after images?

If the answer to any of these is yes, that page needs attention. Fixing it usually makes the page clearer for patients too.

Practices in health and medical and allied health sit under these rules whether their website was written with them in mind or not. It’s far easier to build a site to them from the start than to find out after a complaint.

Where to read the rules yourself

• AHPRA’s advertising hub, including the guidelines and the testimonial tool: ahpra.gov.au
• The TGA’s guidance on advertising health services: tga.gov.au

Want a clinic website written to the guidelines?

Our copywriters write clinic websites to the AHPRA advertising guidelines from the first draft. You check every page before it goes live, and your practice stays responsible for its own advertising. See how our AHPRA and TGA compliance service works. Book a free strategy call and we’ll talk through your site. Written to the guidelines by our copywriting team. Not legal advice.

This article is general information about website content and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between professions and change over time, so check the current guidelines for your profession.