How to check your clinic website for Ahpra advertising problems

Why check your clinic website at all?

Because your website is advertising of a health service, and the same wording rules apply to it as to anything else you publish. Our check cites section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law for several of its rules, next to the Ahpra cosmetic guidelines and the TGA advertising rules.

The sources are specific. For non-surgical treatments the check uses the Ahpra guidelines for advertising higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures, dated 2 September 2025. For surgery it uses the Ahpra and Medical Board guidelines for advertising cosmetic surgery (2023). If your wording was last reviewed before those dates, it is worth a fresh read.

The practical reason is simpler. This is the wording that gets clinics a complaint, and it is easier to fix a sentence on a Tuesday than to answer a notice later.

Which pages, and which parts of a page, should you read?

Read every public page, and on each page read five layers: the page title, the search result description, the social share description, the structured data that Google reads, and the text on the page itself. Most people only read the last one.

The first three are public text under your clinic's name, shown in search results and when someone shares a link. The structured data is invisible on the page but readable by any crawler. A phrase can sit in the description and nowhere else.

If you have to start somewhere, start with treatment pages, pricing and offers, the FAQ, anything with reviews or a gallery, surgery pages and the about page. Those are the pages where the risky wording tends to collect, and they are the ones our check prioritises when it picks which five pages to read.

What are the nine kinds of wording to look for?

There are nine, and each one has a reason behind it. Here they are in plain words, with the reason as our check states it.

1. 1Names of prescription-only medicines. TGA advertising rules do not allow these to be advertised to the public, including by brand name.
2. 2Indirect names for those medicines. The TGA treats some everyday wording for these treatments, and descriptions of how the medicine works, as a reference to the medicine itself.
3. 3Product brands for fillers and implants. These are TGA-regulated therapeutic goods. Advertising is expected to describe the procedure and the consultation rather than a brand. Our check marks these as worth a look rather than likely.
4. 4Claims of being first, or ranking claims. They are hard to back with evidence and can be treated as misleading or comparative advertising.
5. 5Promises of an ideal result. Cosmetic advertising should not create unrealistic expectations about results.
6. 6Wording that downplays risk. Advertising should not claim or imply that a procedure is safe, carries no risk, involves no discomfort or has a certain result. Every procedure carries some risk and results vary.
7. 7Discounts, add-ons at no charge and time-limited offers. These count as inducements to have a procedure.
8. 8Wording that plays on insecurity. It should not encourage people to feel negatively about their appearance.
9. 9Patient reviews and testimonials. This includes Google reviews shown on your own site.

The last one surprises people most. A review feels like the patient's voice, not yours, but once it sits on your site it is part of your advertising. The fix is in the next section.

How do you check the text by hand, step by step?

Work through your site in this order, and write down the exact sentence and the exact address of every problem.

1. 1List every public page: the menu, the footer, the sitemap and any old pages you no longer link to.
2. 2On each page, read the title and the search description first, then the body.
3. 3Read the body once for the nine kinds above and once for anything that sounds like a promise.
4. 4Look at what is embedded rather than typed: review widgets, galleries with captions, banners and pop-ups.
5. 5Check your price lists. A medicine name next to a price is a double problem.
6. 6Write down the sentence and the address, not 'something on the pricing page'. You will need both when you fix it.

Then repeat the exercise for your messages. Reminder texts, automatic replies and email footers are held to the same rules as your website. A clean site with an offer in the reply text is still a problem.

What do the fixes look like?

Most fixes are a deletion or a plainer sentence. These are the ones our check suggests, in the order the nine kinds appear above.

• Medicine names: remove the name and any description of how it works. Describe the concern you treat, for example frown lines, and invite a consultation. If the name is in a menu, rename the menu item, for example to Lines and wrinkles or Cosmetic consultations.
• Prices: take the medicine name off the price list. Show a consultation fee and give treatment prices at the consultation.
• Product brands: name the treatment, not the product. Say breast implants rather than the brand, and leave brand options for the consultation.
• Ranking claims: drop the claim and say something specific and checkable instead, such as years in practice or your practitioners' qualifications. An award can stay if you state it factually: the award body and the year.
• Results and risk: replace the promise with something like 'Results vary from person to person. Your practitioner will talk you through what to expect.' For risk: 'All procedures carry risks. Your practitioner will explain them at your consultation.'
• Offers and deadlines: remove them. Prices can be listed plainly, without a deal attached.
• Insecurity wording: describe the treatment and what it involves, without suggesting something is wrong with the reader.
• Reviews: take them off your own site and ads. You can still link to an independent review page such as your Google profile.

What does the Ahpra check on this site do, and what does it miss?

You enter your website, it reads up to 5 of your public pages once, and it lists each phrase it finds with the page it is on, why it may be a problem and suggested wording. It splits findings into likely and worth a look, and it filters out ordinary uses of common words so you are not buried in false alarms.

It also has limits, and you should know them before you rely on it:

• It is a wording check, not legal advice. It can miss things and it can flag things that are fine.
• It reads public pages only, and only text. A claim that lives inside an image or a video is outside what it can see.
• Five pages is not your whole site. If your site is larger, repeat the by-hand steps above for the rest.
• The first findings show straight away. The full list sits behind a form where you leave your contact details, and we email the report.
• We keep the result so we can show it to you. We do not collect patient information from your site.

If you would rather not give contact details, the by-hand steps in this article need nothing from us. The Ahpra check is there for the clinics who want the list quickly.

How often should you re-check?

Every time you add a page, change a price list, add a review widget or rewrite a treatment description. Wording drifts when many people edit a site over the years, and the rules themselves are updated: the non-surgical guidelines our check uses are the 2 September 2025 version.

A simple habit works: make the nine kinds a short checklist, and have whoever publishes a page tick it before it goes live.

What should you do after the check?

Fix what you found, then show the changes to your own advisers before you publish them. Final responsibility for your advertising stays with you and your advisers, not with a checker, ours included.

1. 1Fix the likely findings first, then the worth-a-look ones.
2. 2Ask your practitioner or adviser to approve the new wording.
3. 3Run the check again to confirm the phrase is gone and nothing new appeared.
4. 4Apply the same nine kinds to your patient messages. That is the part Conduit automates: every message template is checked against these rules and approved by your clinic before it sends.

If you want to see this on your own clinic, run the check or book a 20-minute demo.