AUAustralia · AHPRA rules

In Australia, one sentence in the wrong place is a criminal offence.

Not a warning letter. A criminal offence, carrying up to $60,000 for a practitioner and $120,000 for a company — per breach. A website with four bad testimonials is not one breach.

Most agencies find this out when a complaint arrives. We check every word before it goes live, against the rules themselves rather than a summary of them.

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THE MOST COMMON MISTAKES WE FINDON LIVE SITES

A five-star review on the homepageIf it mentions a symptom, a treatment or how it turned out, it is prohibited — even if the patient wrote it themselves and meant every word.

The word "specialist"Only if the practitioner holds specialist registration in that exact field. This is the expensive category — it can carry imprisonment.

The word "surgeon"Now restricted. A GP or dermatologist cannot use it, including "cosmetic surgeon". It has to come off the website, the social accounts, the letterhead and the clinic window.

"Best", "leading", "safe", "pain-free"Each needs evidence you can produce on request. Your own audit figures do not count.

Before-and-after photographsNot banned, but the lighting, angle, clothing and posture must match, and the treatment must be the only visible change. Most galleries fail on lighting alone.

In our experience most Australian practice websites carry at least one breach, and nobody in the practice knows.

The rules push you somewhere useful.

Take away testimonials, guarantees and superlatives, and what is left is your doctor explaining honestly what they do, who they treat, and who they turn away.

That happens to be the most persuasive thing you own. It is also the only kind of content an AI system will quote, because it contains a checkable claim rather than an opinion.

So Australian practices are being pushed by a regulator into doing the right work several years before everyone else gets round to it. That is not a handicap. On a long enough view it is a head start.

One thing worth knowing

Not every good review is a prohibited testimonial. If it only mentions the reception, the waiting time or how well things were explained — and says nothing about a symptom, a treatment or an outcome — it is not caught by the rule. Most practices have been advised otherwise.

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Free compliance check for Australian practices.

We read every page, every social post and twelve months of comments, and send you a list of what needs to change, ranked by how much trouble it could cause.

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