Clinic website compliance checklist

Is your clinic website compliant?

Twenty places a doctor's website can cross the medical advertising code, in four groups, each with the reason it matters and the fix. Open your site in another tab and tick what you find. It takes about ten minutes.

This is the audit rather than the argument. Which code applies, and why each of these is a problem, is set out in our guide to whether doctors can advertise in India. For the twenty-second version, there is a nine-point check on our page for doctors.

  1. 1Open your own site beside this page
  2. 2Tick each item you find on it
  3. 3Read the score, then the fixes

Last reviewed September 2026 · General information, not legal advice

Group 1 of 4 · Five checks

Claims and language

What your site says about you. Most of these arrive through well-meant copywriting rather than through any decision of yours.

  • Why it matters. Patients read these in search before they reach your site, so they are your most visible claims, and they are usually added by whoever did the SEO.

    Fix. Use specialty and locality instead. Google's own guidelines also require the Business Profile name to be your real name, without added keywords.

  • Why it matters. They read as description, but they make a claim about your skill or your facilities that nobody can check.

    Fix. Name the equipment or the technique and let the patient judge it. Digital X-ray, not state-of-the-art imaging.

  • Why it matters. An outcome promise is the plainest form of solicitation, and a cure claim for a listed condition also engages the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act.

    Fix. Describe what the treatment involves and its usual course, and say that results vary. Outcomes belong in the consultation.

  • Why it matters. A volume figure is a claim about skill presented as data. It invites attention to achievement, and because it is rarely verifiable it is a consumer protection problem too.

    Fix. Remove it. Qualifications and registration, stated plainly on your profile, carry the same trust without making the claim.

  • Why it matters. Setting yourself against others invites attention to your superiority even when nobody is named. Naming them adds a defamation risk on top.

    Fix. Say what you do. Leave out what others do not.

Group 2 of 4 · Five checks

Patient material

What your site shows of your patients. The most common problems of the four groups, and the ones that consent alone does not fix.

  • Why it matters. Reproducing patient praise on your own site is promotional use of patients, and it is the problem we find most often.

    Fix. Remove the section. Reviews that patients leave on Google can stay there, in the patient's words and in the patient's place.

  • Why it matters. Automating the display does not change who chose to publish it. An embed is still you putting reviews on your own site.

    Fix. Remove the widget and the plugin behind it. It was probably sold to you as a trust signal, which is exactly the problem.

  • Why it matters. They use patient material to demonstrate outcomes, which makes them promotional use of patients and an implied outcome claim at once.

    Fix. Take them off public pages. Where a procedure needs explaining, a diagram explains it without showing anybody's result.

  • Why it matters. The code names boasting of cases and cures. Removing the patient's name deals with privacy, not with the boast.

    Fix. Rewrite it as condition education, covering what it is, how it presents and how it is treated, without the arc that ends in your success.

  • Why it matters. Consent to treatment is not consent to marketing. Under the DPDP Act, 2023, using personal data needs consent for that specific purpose.

    Fix. Get written consent naming each use, keep it on file, and honour a withdrawal. Consent settles privacy; it does not make promotional use acceptable.

Group 3 of 4 · Five checks

Credentials

How your qualifications are presented. One item here is a problem of absence rather than of excess.

  • Why it matters. The code already expects your registration number in your clinic and on your prescriptions, and it is how a patient verifies who you are.

    Fix. Add the number and the council that issued it to your profile, as plain text that can be copied and searched.

  • Why it matters. The code allows recognised degrees and diplomas after your name, and memberships only where they reflect real professional qualification. One that was simply paid for does not.

    Fix. Keep recognised qualifications after your name. List other memberships separately, described as memberships.

  • Why it matters. The clause names appointments, associations and affiliations. A hospital's logo on your private site also implies that the hospital endorses you.

    Fix. State current appointments in plain text on your profile. Remove institutional logos unless the institution has agreed in writing.

  • Why it matters. Honours are named in the clause directly. If an award was paid for, presenting it as recognition is misleading as well.

    Fix. Take them off the site. An award that genuinely matters to you belongs on your CV, not in your marketing.

  • Why it matters. Inflating who treats patients misrepresents the practice to the person choosing it, which is a consumer problem before it is an ethics one.

    Fix. Name each doctor, their qualifications and the days they are available. List visiting consultants as visiting.

Group 4 of 4 · Five checks

Advertising and social

Everything outside the website itself. Usually the fastest group to fix, because the fix is in your hands rather than your developer's.

  • Why it matters. Ad formats reward superlatives and urgency in thirty characters, and every ad is a dated public record of the claim.

    Fix. Write ads in the same register as the site. Check your sitelinks and callouts too; that is where the forgotten claims live.

  • Why it matters. Education followed by a sales push is solicitation with education attached. The caption is the part that turns the post.

    Fix. End on the useful thought. Keep booking details in your bio and profile, where they are information rather than a pitch.

  • Why it matters. Publishing your fees is permitted. Discounting them to draw in patients who were not coming is an inducement, and that is solicitation.

    Fix. Publish your fees plainly and keep them stable. Drop the campaigns.

  • Why it matters. That is an endorsement whatever the invoice calls it, and the CCPA's endorsement guidelines add a disclosure duty on top.

    Fix. End the arrangement. Content about conditions should come from you, written as education.

  • Why it matters. A neutral request is fine. Incentivised or selective requests turn a record into solicited praise, and Google's own review policies prohibit both.

    Fix. Ask every patient the same neutral question with nothing attached: if you would like to, you can review your visit here.

Ticking nothing does not make a site compliant. It means none of these twenty is present. This is general information rather than legal advice, and the code is yours to apply with your own medico-legal advisor.

0 of 20 tickedTick anything you find See score

Your score

Items ticked, out of twenty 0 of twenty
Tick anything you find Work through the four groups with your site open beside this page.
  • Claims and language0 / 5
  • Patient material0 / 5
  • Credentials0 / 5
  • Advertising and social0 / 5
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FAQ

After you have ticked

No. Almost everything on this list is fixed by editing copy or removing a section rather than by rebuilding. Start with the group where you ticked most, which the score panel names for you; on a tie, start with patient material, because it is the easiest for anyone to see and the hardest to defend. Advertising and social fixes can usually be made the same day, since they sit with you rather than with your developer.

You are. The NMC regulates practitioners rather than the agencies they hire, so a testimonials block your web designer added is still your testimonials block. That is also why no agency, including us, can certify a site as compliant. The most we can do is build to the code and flag what sits close to the line.

Yes. Your Business Profile is publicity through a different channel, so the same test applies to its name, description, posts, photos and your replies to reviews. It is also where superlatives creep in most often, because the name field is the first thing anyone tries to optimise.

Whenever something new goes on the site, and once a year regardless. Problems often arrive after launch rather than in the original build: a review widget somebody installs, a festival offer, a caption copied from Instagram onto a treatment page. A yearly pass takes ten minutes and catches what has drifted in.

Want a second pair of eyes on it?

Book the free twenty-minute review and we will go through your site against this list, tell you which items we found and what we would change, and leave the decisions with you and your advisor.

When we build a site, these twenty are the brief we write to, which is the whole basis of our website design for doctors and clinics. If you would rather write than call, send us a message instead.

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