AHPRA Advertising Guidelines: What Health Businesses Can and Cannot Say

Key Takeaways

• Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law regulates advertising of regulated health services and binds any person who advertises them, including practice owners and companies that are not registered practitioners.
• The five prohibitions: advertising that is false, misleading or deceptive; gifts or discounts offered without their terms; use of testimonials; creating unreasonable expectations of beneficial treatment; and encouraging indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services.
• Following the 2022 National Law amendments, each advertising offence carries a maximum penalty of $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate, and a single campaign can involve many separate contraventions.
• The Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 sits on top: prescription-only substances cannot be advertised to the public at all, which is why cosmetic injectable marketing cannot name products or use recognisable nicknames for them.
• The same advertisement can also contravene the Australian Consumer Law, which carries far larger penalties again, so a compliance review should cover both regimes at once.

1. 1.Who the Advertising Rules Bind
2. 2.The Five Prohibitions in Section 133
3. 3.The Penalties, Since the 2022 Amendments
4. 4.The TGA Overlay: Injectables and Prescription Products
5. 5.Do Not Forget the Australian Consumer Law
6. 6.A Practical Compliance Pass
7. 7.Frequently Asked Questions

Most health practice marketing is written by people thinking about patients, not regulators. That is how it should be, right up until the moment a campaign mentions an outcome, quotes a happy patient or names an injectable. Advertising a regulated health service in Australia is governed by s 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Ahpra's advertising guidelines, and the rules apply to the business that publishes the advertising, whether or not anyone involved is a registered practitioner.

This guide sets out what the law actually prohibits, where practices most often get caught, how the Therapeutic Goods Act overlays the National Law for injectables and prescription products and what a sensible compliance review looks like. For what happens when the regulator moves from advertising to conduct, see our guide to AHPRA investigations stage by stage.

Who the Advertising Rules Bind

Section 133 opens with "a person must not advertise a regulated health service" in the prohibited ways. Not "a practitioner". A person. That drafting choice matters: the prohibition reaches the clinic company, the practice owner who is not a clinician, the marketing manager who places the campaign and, in principle, an agency publishing on the practice's behalf. A common and expensive assumption is that advertising compliance is the practitioners' problem. If your business advertises physiotherapy, dentistry, cosmetic medicine or any other regulated health service, it is your problem.

"Advertising" is read broadly. The website, Google Business Profile, social media accounts, paid search, printed material, signage and directory listings are all advertising. So is content the practice adopts or shares, which is where the testimonial problem below usually starts.

The Five Prohibitions in Section 133

1. False, misleading or deceptive advertising

The broadest limb and the one most enforcement starts from. It covers untrue claims, but also true statements arranged to create a wrong impression: cherry-picked results, qualifications stated in a way that implies specialist registration a practitioner does not hold, "leading" and "best" claims that cannot be substantiated and photographs edited or lit to overstate an outcome. Titles are a recurring trap: "specialist" and "surgeon" are protected in ways that catch marketing writers by surprise.

2. Gifts and discounts without their terms

Offering an inducement is not prohibited. Offering one without stating its terms and conditions is. A "free consultation for new patients" post that omits the conditions attached to it is a contravention in itself, before anyone asks whether the offer encourages unnecessary treatment (see limb five).

3. Testimonials

Advertising must not use recovery stories or testimonials about clinical aspects of a regulated health service. This is the limb practices trip on weekly, because the modern version of a testimonial is a Google or Facebook review. The line the guidance draws: patients are free to post reviews, and a review platform existing is not your advertising. Using reviews becomes your advertising when the practice republishes them, quotes them on the website, features them in posts or curates them into marketing. If your homepage carousel quotes patients on their treatment, that is a testimonial in advertising.

4. Unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment

Outcome talk. Guarantees, "pain-free", success rates presented without context and before-and-after photographs that are not typical, not consistent or not properly consented all sit here. Before-and-after images are not banned, but they carry conditions in the guidelines, and in cosmetic practice they are now scrutinised under the dedicated cosmetic procedures guidance as well.

5. Encouraging indiscriminate or unnecessary use

Urgency and volume devices: countdown offers on clinical services, "book now, limited spots" framing for treatments, bundling that rewards buying more clinical care than a patient needs. Marketing mechanics that are ordinary in retail are prohibited when the product is a health service.

The Penalties, Since the 2022 Amendments

Advertising offences were once treated as a compliance-letter problem. The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2022 (Qld) changed the arithmetic: each advertising offence now carries a maximum penalty of $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate. Because each prohibited advertisement can be a separate offence, a template used across a website, three social channels and a directory listing multiplies the exposure the same way a payroll error multiplies across employees.

Ahpra's advertising compliance approach is graduated: most matters start with a request to amend, escalate to compliance action if ignored and reach prosecution for the persistent or serious end. The practical point is that the early letters are cheap to respond to and the later ones are not, and a practice's response history follows it.

The TGA Overlay: Injectables and Prescription Products

The National Law is not the only regime reading your marketing. Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 (Cth), prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public at all. That is why cosmetic injectable marketing cannot name the products, and why the regulators treat well-known nicknames and abbreviations for those products as advertising the substance just as much as the brand name would. "Anti-wrinkle injections from $X" style pricing posts sit exactly on this line, and the TGA and Ahpra have both said so publicly in their cosmetic advertising guidance.

Practices offering higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures also have dedicated Ahpra guidelines to meet, covering advertising alongside consultation and consent practices. If your marketing touches cosmetic work, it needs to be reviewed against three documents, not one: s 133, the advertising guidelines and the cosmetic procedures guidance, with the Advertising Code of the TGA behind all of them.

Do Not Forget the Australian Consumer Law

An advertisement that misleads patients almost always also engages the Australian Consumer Law, and the ACL's penalties dwarf the National Law's. Health businesses have faced ACCC and state fair-trading attention for the same conduct Ahpra polices: unsubstantiated outcome claims, fake or curated reviews and misleading pricing. A proper advertising review covers both regimes in one pass, because the fix is usually the same and the exposure is cumulative.

A Practical Compliance Pass

• Inventory the surfaces. Website, socials, Google Business Profile, paid campaigns, directories, printed material, on-hold messages. The forgotten surfaces are where old claims live.
• Strip or condition the inducements. Every offer needs its terms stated where the offer appears.
• Deal with reviews deliberately. Decide what the practice republishes, quotes or embeds. Patient reviews on platforms are theirs; the moment you use them, they are yours.
• Test every outcome statement. If you cannot substantiate it with acceptable evidence, it does not run. Rework before-and-after galleries against the current guidance.
• Check titles and qualifications. Protected titles, implied specialisations and "cosmetic surgeon" style descriptors deserve specific attention.
• Screen for prescription products. No product names, no recognisable nicknames, no pricing for prescription-only substances.
• Keep records. Substantiation for claims, consent for images and a record of what ran where. If Ahpra writes, the practice that can show its homework has a very different conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do the AHPRA advertising rules apply to my clinic if I am not a registered practitioner?

Yes. Section 133 binds any person who advertises a regulated health service, including companies and non-practitioner owners. Ahpra's advertising compliance work regularly involves the business entity rather than an individual clinician.

Can patients leave Google reviews for my practice?

Yes, and you cannot stop them. The prohibition is on the use of testimonials in your advertising. The practical rule: do not republish, quote, embed or curate reviews that speak to clinical aspects of care, and do not solicit reviews in a way that filters for positive ones.

Are before-and-after photos banned?

No, but they are conditioned. They must be genuine, consistent, not misleading about typical outcomes and used with the patient's informed consent, and for cosmetic procedures the dedicated guidelines add further requirements. Edited or best-case-only galleries are where practices come unstuck.

What is the penalty for breaching the advertising rules?

Up to $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate for each offence under the National Law since the 2022 amendments, alongside Ahpra compliance action. The same conduct can also contravene the Australian Consumer Law, which carries substantially higher penalties again.

Marketing a health practice? We review advertising against the National Law, the Ahpra guidelines and the TGA rules, and we act when the regulator has already written. Call Astris Law on (07) 3519 5616. See our health and medical industry page and our guide to AHPRA's social media rules.

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