Clinics and health professionals: what your code allows in advertising

The Code of ethics of physicians requires that information addressed to the public be factual, exact and verifiable, with no comparative or superlative statement. That single standard eliminates half of the usual advertising vocabulary, and it explains why most of the proposals a clinic receives are unusable.

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The standard that replaces advertising vocabulary

We are writing here for clinic management teams and health professionals in private practice: medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, medical aesthetics, imaging. It describes the framework that applies to physicians and replaces neither reading your own code nor advice from your order.

The Code of ethics of physicians provides at section 88.0.1 that a physician who addresses the public must communicate factual, exact and verifiable information, and that this information must not contain any comparative or superlative statement belittling or disparaging a service or product dispensed by another.

Read that sentence next to an ordinary advertising proposal. The best care, an advanced technology, a unique approach, the widest choice: each of those wordings is either superlative, comparative or unverifiable.

The effect on the budget is immediate. A clinic that receives a $24,000 proposal built on that vocabulary is buying work it cannot use, and the redo costs the same amount a second time. That is the first trade-off to make: pay once for compliant content, or twice for content to redo.

What remains costs less to produce and sells better: years of practice, training completed, techniques offered, real wait times, languages spoken, equipment in place. Those are facts a third party could confirm, and they are also what patients actually base their choice on.

Testimonials, a nuance that matters

This is where the codes diverge, with practical consequences.

The Code of ethics of physicians provides at section 88.1 that a physician may not, in an advertisement, use or allow to be used in an unsuitable way an endorsement or statement of gratitude concerning them or their professional practice.

The wording contains a nuance the lawyers' code does not have. For physicians, it is the unsuitable use that is targeted.

That nuance is not a general permission. It calls for the opposite of an opportunistic reading: have your specific use qualified by your order rather than concluding that a testimonial is acceptable because the word prohibited does not appear. A qualification costs a few hundred dollars; a complaint costs weeks of management time.

Scope is essential here. Each health profession has its own code. Dentists, nurses and physiotherapists do not follow exactly the same rules, and a multidisciplinary clinic must reckon with the most restrictive code that applies to its professionals. The general framework is covered in our article on advertising by professionals governed by an order.

Results photos and promises

This is the most delicate ground, particularly in medical aesthetics.

A results image is a claim. It must therefore meet the same standard: factual, exact and verifiable. A result presented as representative when it is exceptional is not, and the risk far outweighs the commercial gain.

The Code also governs opinions expressed in the media: a physician must express opinions in keeping with current medical science and, for a diagnostic, investigative or treatment method that is insufficiently tested, state the appropriate reservations.

Applied to marketing, that rule decides a great deal, including the content of a paid ad. A recent technique is not presented as established, a result is not promised, and a recovery time is given as a real range rather than the best case observed.

What remains is honest description, possible and effective: what the procedure does, what it does not do, the usual after-effects, the cases where it is not suitable. A person who reads that gives it more credit than a promise, and they arrive better prepared.

The commercial effect is measurable and runs in the right direction. A consultation with someone already informed takes less time, closes more often, and produces fewer cancellations. In a clinic where the cost of a time slot is known, that time saving converts directly into revenue.

Patient data is sensitive

A layer adds itself to the ethical framework, and it targets precisely the marketing practices that look most profitable.

Health information is sensitive personal information. The Commission d'accès à l'information, Quebec's privacy regulator, states that organizations must obtain express consent before using sensitive personal information for a purpose other than the one planned at collection.

The consequences are direct and costly. A patient list is not a prospect list. A file built to provide care was not collected to segment a campaign, that is, to split a clientele into groups to target separately. An appointment reminder is not a promotional newsletter.

Then there is where the data is processed: entrusting patient information to a tool hosted outside Quebec is a communication outside Quebec, subject to a prior assessment under Law 25, Quebec's private-sector privacy law.

The simple rule to remember in a clinic: what comes from the file stays in the file. A marketing list is built through a separate sign-up, with its own consent.

That separation has a real cost: your usable list will be smaller than your patient base, sometimes much smaller. It is a decision to own rather than work around, and the math is simple. A list of 900 voluntary subscribers produces more appointments than a list of 6,000 people who never asked for anything, and it does not expose you.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing means paying a person with a social media following to recommend your services. The Collège des médecins du Québec has published on the subject because the practice has spread and the budgets involved have grown.

Two rules combine poorly with this format and make the investment risky. Influencer content runs on testimonial and enthusiasm, two registers the factual information standard does not accommodate. And the professional remains responsible for what is published about them, even without having written the content.

A collaboration remains possible under strict conditions: clear disclosure of the commercial relationship and its price, content validated before publication, claims limited to what is factual and verifiable, no promise of results.

In practice, those conditions strip the format of what makes it attractive. That is useful information: an influencer budget in a clinic rarely delivers what is expected of it, and it exposes you more than other channels. The same amount invested in explanatory content pays for longer and carries no ethical risk.

What works within this framework

Five levers, ranked by return relative to cost.

The fifth decides the feasibility of the rest. A clinic where no professional has time to validate cannot publish, whatever the budget committed.

Put a number on that time before launching a content program. One hour of validation per week, at a professional's hourly cost, is a real expense that belongs in the project budget. A clinic that does not plan for it will see production stop in the third month, after paying for the setup.

This point sits inside the plan described in the marketing plan and its budget.

Frequently asked questions about health care advertising