Most dental practices do not breach the advertising rules deliberately. They breach them by publishing something that looks ordinary: a five star review with a line about how good the veneers turned out, a whitening offer with a price and no terms, a photo of a result that was never going to be typical.
AHPRA advertising
What AHPRA advertising rules permit and forbid for a dental practice
The rules themselves are not long, and they are not written to catch people out. This page sets out what they say, in plain English, for a dental practice deciding what it can put on its website and social accounts.
Who the rules apply to
Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law applies to anyone who advertises a regulated health service. That is broader than most practices expect. It covers the registered practitioner, the practice as a business, and anyone advertising on the practice’s behalf, including a marketing agency or a contracted content creator.
The practice does not escape responsibility by outsourcing the work. If an agency publishes a post that breaches the rules, the practice and the practitioner are still accountable for it.
Ahpra’s Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service sit alongside section 133 and explain how Ahpra interprets it. The current version took effect on 14 December 2020. Ahpra also publishes a summary of the advertising requirements and a page covering advertising and the law.
What counts as advertising
Ahpra defines advertising broadly: all forms of verbal, printed and electronic communication that promote and seek to attract a person to a regulated health service.
In practice that means all of the following are advertising:
- Your website, including service pages, pricing pages and blog posts
- Your social media accounts, including captions, comments you post, and stories
- Google Business Profile content you write
- Email newsletters and SMS campaigns
- Signage, print ads, brochures and letterbox drops
- Sponsored content, influencer posts and anything else you pay for
- Video, podcast appearances and webinars where you promote your services
The test is whether the content promotes the service and seeks to attract patients, not what format it takes or where it sits.
The five things advertising must not do
Section 133 sets out five prohibitions. Advertising must not:
1. Be false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be
This is the broadest of the five and the one most breaches fall under. It covers untrue claims, but also claims that are technically true and still leave a false impression. Omitting material information counts. So does emphasis: a price that appears in large type with the conditions in small type can mislead even when every word is accurate.
2. Offer a gift, discount or other inducement without stating the terms and conditions
Discounts and offers are not banned. Incomplete ones are. If you advertise a free consultation, a discounted check up or a bundled package, the terms have to appear with the offer, not on a separate page the reader has to go looking for.
3. Use testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or the practitioner
This is the prohibition practices find most confusing, and it is narrower than it is usually described. It has its own section below.
4. Create an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment
Advertising cannot suggest an outcome that the evidence does not support, or present an exceptional result as though it were the norm. This is where before and after imagery, success rates and outcome claims usually come unstuck.
5. Encourage the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services
Urgency and scarcity tactics sit awkwardly here. Encouraging people to book a treatment they have no clinical need for, or to act now to avoid missing out, can breach this prohibition even where every factual claim in the ad is correct.
Testimonials: the part practices get wrong most
A testimonial, for the purposes of section 133, is a recommendation or positive statement about the clinical aspects of the service. Ahpra’s test is whether the statement refers to at least one of:
- the symptom or reason the person sought treatment
- the diagnosis or the treatment provided
- the outcome, or the practitioner’s clinical skills and experience
If none of those are present, it is not a testimonial under the National Law. Ahpra publishes a tool explaining the testimonial requirements, which is worth reading in full if reviews are a significant part of your marketing.
What this permits
Comments about customer service, communication, the wait, the parking, how the team handled a nervous patient, or how easy it was to book are not testimonials. A complete, unedited review that only mentions non clinical aspects can be used in advertising. Star ratings without clinical commentary are also acceptable.
What it does not permit
A practice cannot publish, on its own website or its own social accounts, a review that praises the treatment, the result or the dentist’s clinical skill. The five star review that says the implant changed someone’s life is a testimonial, and it cannot be used in the practice’s own advertising.
Reviews on platforms you do not control
A practice is not responsible for removing clinical reviews that patients leave on Google or a third party booking site. The obligation attaches to what the practice controls or authorises. Where it goes wrong is republishing: taking a glowing Google review with clinical detail and putting it on your own website or Instagram turns it into your advertising, and then it is a breach.
A trap worth knowing
Selectively curating reviews, even non clinical ones, carries its own risk. Publishing only the positive ones, or editing a review down to its most flattering sentence, can be misleading and deceptive under the first prohibition even though the testimonial rule was not engaged. Take the whole review or leave it.
If a review function on your own website or Facebook page collects clinical comments you then have to manage, turning the function off is a legitimate option.
Titles and qualifications
Protected titles can only be used by practitioners registered in that profession. Dentist, dental hygienist, dental therapist, oral health therapist and dental prosthetist are all protected.
“Dr” used by a dentist requires care. A dentist who uses the title Dr in advertising should make their profession clear so the public is not led to believe they are a medical practitioner. “Dr Jane Smith (Dentist)” is the standard approach.
Specialist titles are limited to practitioners holding specialist registration in that field. A general dentist who does a lot of orthodontic work is not an orthodontist, and describing the practice as offering specialist orthodontics when no registered specialist works there is both a title breach and likely misleading.
Qualifications and memberships can be stated, but they should be accurate and meaningful to the public. A weekend course is not a qualification in the sense a patient will read it.
The Dental Board of Australia’s advertising guidance covers the requirements as they apply to the dental professions specifically.
Prices and offers
Price information has to be clear, accurate and complete. Ahpra’s guidance is that advertised pricing should show the total cost rather than an initial or partial charge.
For a dental practice, the usual problems are:
- Advertising a treatment “from $X” where almost no patient pays $X
- Quoting a per visit price for something that always takes several
- Omitting the cost of consultations, imaging or follow up that the treatment requires
- Running a time limited offer without stating when it ends or who is eligible
If a price depends on the individual case, say so plainly and say what the quoted figure covers.
Before and after photographs
Before and after images are not prohibited. They are, however, the fastest route into two of the five prohibitions at once.
An image set can create an unreasonable expectation of benefit if it presents an unusually good result without context. It can be misleading if the two photographs are not genuinely comparable: different lighting, different angles, different makeup, retouching, or a gap in time that is not disclosed. And if the images are published alongside a patient comment about how pleased they were with the result, the comment is a testimonial even though the photographs on their own were not.
The safer approach is to use images of actual patients of the practice, taken under consistent conditions, presented with enough information for a reader to understand what the treatment involved and what a realistic range of outcomes looks like.
AI generated or stock imagery presented as a practice’s own results is misleading, straightforwardly.
Health condition claims and evidence
If advertising says a treatment helps a particular condition, the claim needs acceptable evidence behind it, and the advertising should make clear how the treatment helps that condition. Ahpra’s benchmark is evidence of the kind accepted in peer reviewed literature, not a supplier’s marketing material.
Comparative claims carry the same burden. Saying a technique is faster, more comfortable or longer lasting than the alternative invites the question “compared with what, and on what evidence”, and an ad that cannot answer it is likely to be misleading.
Where a treatment carries material risks, leaving them out can itself mislead the reader about the benefit.
What happens when it goes wrong
Ahpra manages advertising complaints, and anyone can make one. In most cases the first step is an educative one: Ahpra notifies the advertiser, explains what needs to change and gives a timeframe to fix it. Most matters end there.
Where an advertiser does not correct the issue, or the breach is serious or repeated, the matter can escalate. A breach of the advertising provisions is an offence, and the penalties are larger than most practices realise. Amendments to the National Law in 2022 raised the maximum to $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 per offence for a body corporate, and since July 2024 those increased penalties apply in every jurisdiction, including Western Australia. Ahpra has noted that the guidelines themselves will be updated to reflect this at their next review, so older summaries still quoting the previous figures are out of date.
Separately, advertising conduct can be treated as unprofessional conduct and dealt with through the regulatory process attached to a practitioner’s registration, which is the consequence most practitioners care about more than the fine.
A practical way to review your own advertising
Work through your website and social accounts once, page by page, with these questions:
- Does any review or patient comment on a page we control mention a symptom, a treatment, a result or the dentist’s skill?
- Does every offer, discount or package show its terms and conditions in the same place as the offer?
- Does every price show the total a patient would actually pay, or explain plainly what it covers and what it does not?
- Could any claim about a treatment be read as promising a result we cannot support with evidence?
- Are our before and after images genuinely comparable, genuinely ours, and presented with enough context?
- Does every practitioner’s title match their registration, and is “Dr” qualified with the profession?
- Would anything we have published encourage someone to book a treatment they do not clinically need?
- Has anyone outside the practice, including an agency, published something on our behalf that we have not reviewed against these questions?
Most practices find their issues in the first three.
Another set of eyes on your website
Trilbii’s AHPRA Website Checker reviews a practice website page by page and flags content that may need attention against the advertising guidelines and the practice’s own guardrails, with a plain language explanation of why. The practitioner and the practice make the final call on what gets published.
Primary sources
Everything on this page comes from the following. If you are making a decision about specific content, read the source rather than our summary of it.
- Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, Ahpra, effective 14 December 2020
- Summary of the advertising requirements, Ahpra
- Advertising and the law, Ahpra, including the current penalties
- Testimonials: understand the requirements, Ahpra
- Advertising complaints, Ahpra
- Advertising a regulated health service, Dental Board of Australia
- Advertising guidelines and other guidance, Ahpra, for the full set of resources including social media guidance and the acceptable evidence framework
This page explains the advertising requirements in general terms and is not legal advice. A practice with a specific question should refer to the sources above or seek its own advice.