What the guidelines are
Two documents do the work.
The first is the law. Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law sets out what advertising a regulated health service must not do. It is an offence provision, which means a breach can be prosecuted.
The second is guidance. The National Boards publish Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, which explain how the Boards interpret section 133 and give worked examples. The current version has been in force since 14 December 2020. The guidelines are not the law themselves, but AHPRA and the Boards use them when assessing complaints, so they set the practical standard.
Separate, stricter rules apply to advertising cosmetic surgery and, since 2 September 2025, to advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures. If any part of your practice advertises cosmetic procedures, treat that as its own project rather than an extension of this page.
Who is responsible
The advertiser. In practice that means the registered practitioner whose service is being promoted and the business providing the regulated health service.
Hiring an agency does not shift that responsibility. Neither does using a franchise-supplied template, an industry group's stock content, or a marketing platform's automated copy generator. If it promotes your regulated health service and it breaches section 133, you are the one answering for it.
This is worth saying to whoever writes your marketing. A good supplier will already be working to the rules. A supplier who has never mentioned them is a risk you are carrying personally.
The five prohibitions, and what they look like in practice
1. False, misleading or deceptive
The widest of the five, and the one most breaches fall under.
It covers outright false statements, but it also covers technically true statements arranged to leave a false impression. Claiming an area of practice you are not qualified in. Implying registration or endorsement you do not hold. Using "specialist" when you are not registered in an approved specialty. Quoting a price that omits a material cost.
Superlatives sit here too. "Best", "leading", "number one" and "most advanced" are claims. If you cannot substantiate them with evidence a reasonable person would accept, do not publish them.
2. Offers without terms and conditions
You can run an offer. What you cannot do is dangle it without the conditions attached.
A "free consultation" needs the limits stated. "$99 new patient exam" needs what is included, what is not, and any expiry. The conditions need to be reasonably accessible from the ad, not buried three clicks deep on an unrelated page.
The point of this rule is that a patient should be able to see the actual deal before it influences their decision to seek care.
3. Testimonials
The rule that generates the most confusion, so it is worth being precise.
Section 133 prohibits using testimonials in advertising. A testimonial, in this context, is a statement about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service.
The dividing line matters. Comments about clinical aspects, meaning the treatment, its outcome, or the practitioner's clinical skill or experience, are testimonials and cannot be used in advertising. Comments about non-clinical matters, such as customer service, communication style, parking or wait times, are not testimonials and may be used.
What this means day to day:
- You cannot put a patient's comment about their treatment outcome on your website, in an ad, in a brochure or in a social post.
- You should not solicit testimonials for use in your advertising.
- Reviews left by patients on platforms you do not control are not generally treated as your advertising, and you are not expected to hunt them down and remove them. The rules do not stop patients posting reviews or sharing their views.
- The moment you take one of those reviews and reuse it in material you control, it becomes your advertising and the prohibition applies.
- Be careful about engaging with or responding to reviews on third-party sites: doing so may be treated as using a testimonial to advertise.
The practical position most clinics land on: let reviews live where patients leave them, do not pull them into owned channels, and do not manufacture marketing material from them.
4. Unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment
Promising outcomes you cannot promise. "Pain-free." "Guaranteed results." "Permanent." "Cure."
Health outcomes vary between patients, and advertising that flattens that variation into a promise creates an expectation the treatment cannot reliably meet. Where a claim is genuinely supported, say what the evidence actually says rather than rounding it up.
5. Encouraging indiscriminate or unnecessary use
This one catches ordinary marketing tactics that work perfectly well in other industries.
Artificial urgency around a clinical service. Volume discounts on treatment. Package deals that reward more intervention. Prize draws tied to booking. Anything that pushes a person toward a regulated health service they may not clinically need, at a time driven by your calendar rather than their condition.
Scarcity and urgency are standard conversion levers. In healthcare advertising they are a liability.
Before-and-after photos
Permitted, but tightly constrained, and easy to get wrong.
Where images are used, the two states need to be genuinely comparable. Same lighting, same angle, same framing, no retouching or filters, no cherry-picking an unrepresentative result. Consent must be obtained and documented. The surrounding copy must not turn the image into a promise of the same outcome for the reader.
If you cannot meet the comparability standard, do not run the images. A weak before-and-after set does less for conversion than clear writing about what the procedure involves.
Titles, qualifications and protected terms
Only practitioners with the relevant registration may use protected titles.
The "surgeon" rule tightened recently. Following an amendment to the National Law that introduced section 115A, only medical practitioners holding specialist registration in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, or ophthalmology may use the title "surgeon". General practitioners and specialists in other areas cannot use it, including "cosmetic surgeon". The rule applies to registered medical practitioners; dentists using "dental surgeon" and podiatry specialist titles are not affected. "Specialist" is restricted to approved specialties, and references to "surgeon" must be removed from all advertising, including websites, social media, letterheads and clinic signage.
Qualifications listed in advertising should be relevant to the service being advertised and stated in a way a patient can understand. A long string of postnominals that implies clinical seniority the practitioner does not hold is a misleading claim, even when every letter is real.
Where the TGA rules overlap
Worth knowing, because it catches clinics that are otherwise careful.
Advertising of prescription-only medicines to the public is restricted under therapeutic goods law, separately from anything AHPRA administers. In practice, that means certain treatments cannot be named in public-facing advertising even when the service itself is entirely legitimate. Cosmetic injectables and prescription weight management medicines are the common examples.
Two different regulators, two different sets of rules, one piece of marketing that has to satisfy both.
What happens if you get it wrong
Complaints can be made by anyone, including competitors, and they frequently are. AHPRA assesses advertising complaints and can require material to be corrected or removed. Breaches of section 133 can be prosecuted, with maximum penalties of $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 per offence for a body corporate, and unlawful use of a protected title can carry up to three years imprisonment. NSW and Queensland run a separate co-regulatory process.
For most practices the first consequence is not a fine. It is a letter, a deadline, and a campaign that has to come down.
A short pre-publish check
Before anything goes live, look at it and ask:
- Can every claim in this be substantiated?
- Is there a patient comment about treatment anywhere in it?
- If there is an offer, are the conditions visible?
- Does anything here promise or imply an outcome?
- Is anything creating urgency that is commercial rather than clinical?
- Do the images meet the comparability standard?
- Are the titles and qualifications accurate and relevant?
If you cannot answer all seven confidently, the piece is not ready.
Next
Google Ads deserves its own treatment, because the platform will generate copy on your behalf unless you stop it. That is covered in AHPRA-compliant Google Ads.
If you would rather someone went through what you already have, we will review your website and ad accounts and give you a written list of what we would change.
Keep exploring
AHPRA compliance hub
Start with the complete plain-English map of regulated healthcare advertising.
Read guide
AHPRA-compliant Google Ads
See how the rules apply inside a live paid-search account and its landing pages.
Read guide
Important note
General information only. It is not legal advice and does not replace the current guidelines published by AHPRA and the National Boards. Check the source material or seek advice on your specific situation.