The Ahpra guidelines for advertising higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures, dated 2 September 2025, apply to your clinic website because a website is advertising of a health service. In practice that means the text on every public page, and the text around it, has to stay inside a short list of wording rules.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I build tools that check wording, so I read these rules closely. Here is what the sources say, how I read them, and where you should ask your own adviser.
Which rules apply to a cosmetic clinic website?
Four sources sit behind the check on this site. For non-surgical treatments it is the Ahpra guidelines for advertising higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures (2 September 2025). For surgery it is the Ahpra and Medical Board guidelines for advertising cosmetic surgery (2023). Next to those sit the TGA advertising rules and section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law.
They do different jobs. The National Law section sets out what health service advertising must not do, such as being misleading or using testimonials. The Ahpra guidelines apply that to cosmetic work. The TGA rules cover medicines and devices, which is why they matter for the names you use on a page.
If your wording was last reviewed before the 2025 version, it is worth a fresh read. You do not need to memorise any of this. You need to know which kinds of sentence put a clinic at risk.
Does the website count as advertising?
Yes. Treatment pages, price lists, the FAQ, the about page, the search description and any messages you send are all advertising of a health service. The same rules reach text you did not write yourself, such as a review widget someone added to your homepage.
That is why the check I built reads five layers of a page: the title, the search description, the social share description, the structured data that Google reads, and the visible text. A phrase can sit in the search description and nowhere else, and it is still your advertising.
What kinds of wording does the guidance target?
Our check looks for nine kinds. In short:
- Names of prescription-only medicines, direct or indirect
- Product brands for fillers and implants
- Claims of being first or ranking claims
- Promises of an ideal result
- Wording that downplays risk or implies safety
- Offers, add-ons at no charge and time-limited deals
- Wording that plays on insecurity
- Patient reviews and testimonials
That is eight bullets because two of the nine, direct and indirect medicine names, share one line. If you want the method first, start with how to check your website step by step.
Why do medicine names get so much attention?
Because prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public under the TGA advertising rules, and the rules treat some everyday wording and descriptions of how a medicine works as a reference to the medicine itself. A clinic can mention a medicine by name on a page and feel it is only being informative. The rules do not see it that way.
The safe pattern is to describe the concern you treat, such as frown lines, and invite a consultation. The practitioner can then discuss options in person. Our check marks medicine names as likely problems, and fillers and implants as worth a look, because those are product brands rather than prescription medicines.
What changed with the September 2025 version?
I can tell you which version our check follows and I would rather not summarise a change list I have not verified. Our check cites the 2 September 2025 guidelines for non-surgical treatments, and the 2023 guidelines for surgery. Read the documents themselves for what changed, or ask your adviser to.
What I can say from building against them: the practical rules are stable at the level of a clinic website. Nothing from patients quoted as praise, no inducements, no unrealistic expectations, no claim that a procedure is safe or carries no risk, and no medicine names. If your site was clean on those in 2023, you are probably close now, but check.
Does the same apply to cosmetic surgery pages?
Yes, with its own guidelines. The Ahpra and Medical Board guidelines for advertising cosmetic surgery (2023) are the source our check uses for surgery. The wording rules look familiar: no ranking claims, no unrealistic expectations, no inducements, no reviews.
Surgery adds a different concern, which is the order in which a patient moves from enquiry to deposit. In the system I built for a cosmetic surgery group, that order is enquiry, GP referral noted, two consultations, a 7-day gap, then a deposit. Those steps are configured for each practice during setup, because the rules are the practice's, and I do not set clinical or legal policy. There is more on this in the cosmetic surgery page.
Who is responsible when a page breaks the rules?
The advertiser is responsible, which is you and your advisers. Our check, and every checker, is a wording check. It can miss things and it can flag things that are fine. The terms of this site say final responsibility for your advertising stays with you and your advisers.
That also applies to messages. Conduit checks each message template against the same rules before it sends, and your clinic approves each one. We are not your lawyers, so final sign-off stays with you.
What should you do this week?
- 1List every public page, including old ones you no longer link to.
- 2Read the titles and search descriptions first, because they are the easiest to forget.
- 3Remove medicine names, reviews, offers and ranking claims.
- 4Replace result promises with 'Results vary from person to person.'
- 5Ask your adviser to approve the new wording before it goes live.
If you want a quick first pass, the Ahpra check reads up to 5 public pages and lists each phrase with the page it is on and suggested wording. The first findings show straight away and the full list comes by email. It reads text only, so claims inside images or video are outside what it can see.