The assumption that feels completely reasonable
You are not a copywriter. You hired professionals precisely because they know this better than you do. You paid them, they wrote it, and if something on the page is wrong then surely that sits with them — that is what you were buying.
It is a fair assumption and it is the wrong way round. Ahpra's guidelines say an advertiser has control of the advertising if they publish or authorise content, or direct someone to publish or draft content — and the bracket after that phrase names a third party, a staff member, or a marketing agency explicitly.
Directing an agency to write your content is not a way out of being the advertiser. It is listed as one of the things that makes you the advertiser. The next line closes it: advertisers are responsible for their advertising, so they need to check any content produced by others on their behalf.
On a clinic's own website, the guidelines do not leave it to inference at all. Whoever has control over the website is responsible for compliance.
What changed, and why nobody noticed
In 2022 the National Law was amended to increase the maximum penalty for advertising offences. Ahpra now states the financial penalties as a maximum of $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 per offence for a body corporate. Where a breach involves unlawful use of a protected title, the maximum runs to imprisonment for up to three years. As of July 2024 the increased penalties apply in all jurisdictions.
Before that, the figures were $5,000 and $10,000. Twelve times lower — and small enough to file under cost of doing business.
That is the whole reason this feels less urgent than it is. The industry's instinct about the stakes was formed when the number was survivable. Nobody sent a memo when it stopped being. And the two words carrying the most weight in Ahpra's sentence are per offence — a website is not one offence.
Five things clinic owners believe aren't on them
Every one of these has been said to us by an operator who was being careful rather than careless.
"We stopped naming the brand — we say 'wrinkle reducing injections' now."
That switch is the most common fix in the industry, and the TGA has addressed it directly. Its guidance says it no longer expressly permits references to terms such as "wrinkle reducing injections" or "dermal fillers" where those terms would lead a reasonable consumer to understand that the intention of the content is to promote the use or supply of a prescription-only medicine. The euphemism is not automatically safe. What matters is what a reasonable consumer takes it to mean.
"We only use the nickname. Everyone does."
The TGA covers this too, and more broadly than most people expect — the restriction reaches references made through acronyms, nicknames, abbreviations and hashtags where a consumer may take them as referring to a specific prescription-only medicine. A hashtag is a reference. So is the shorthand everyone in the clinic uses.
"Those posts are from 2019 — nobody sees them."
The TGA's answer is short. Because of the nature of social media posts and their ready accessibility regardless of the date posted, all social media posts, historical and new, are required to comply. The archive is not the past. It is a live shelf, and it is still selling.
"A patient wrote that review. I didn't say it."
This one has a genuine split in it, and most operators hold the wrong half. Ahpra's position is that advertisers are not responsible for removing testimonials published on platforms they do not control — the platform owner is. So no, you are not expected to police what a stranger typed into Google.
But a review republished on your own website is yours, because whoever controls the website is responsible for it. And Ahpra notes that a clinic may control other content on a third-party profile and would be responsible for that content complying. The reviews are not yours. The profile they sit on is.
"If it were really a problem, someone would have told us."
Someone may be about to. But there is a faster test, and it takes about a minute: search your clinic name alongside a brand name. If you rank, the word is on a surface you control — your site, your profile, your posts — because that is the only way a search engine could have made the association.
Ranking for a term you are not permitted to use in advertising is not a marketing win. It is a receipt.
Why careful operators still get this wrong
Asked for a list of acceptable substitute terms, the TGA declines to provide one — it does not give advice on specific circumstances or publish a list of acceptable or substitute wording. There is no safe list to copy.
Which means the terminology being passed around between clinics, in groups and at conferences and between friendly competitors, is a set of guesses. Confident ones, often. Still guesses.
Two problems that look identical from outside
When a clinic finds something wrong in its own advertising, it is nearly always one of two things — and telling them apart decides what the fix costs.
Execution problems live in the words. A claim that overstates, a testimonial that should not be there, a medicine named without what has to sit alongside it. Someone wrote a sentence that should have been written differently, and rewriting it genuinely fixes it.
Foundation problems live in the arrangement. Who administers, under whose authority, on what documented basis. Whether the contractor model that looked like flexibility has quietly parked an obligation on one person who never priced it.
From outside, both appear as words on a page. That is the trap. A rewrite makes an execution problem disappear and a foundation problem invisible — the sentence goes, the arrangement underneath it stays, and the clinic now believes it has dealt with something it has only stopped mentioning.
MPS writes the words. It does not pretend a rewrite fixes the second kind — and it will tell you which one you have before quoting you for either. The longer read on who carries what, covering both Australia and New Zealand, is on SigmaSync.
What to do this week
- Read your own site as a stranger. Not the homepage — the treatment pages, the booking flow, the staff bios, the footer nobody has touched since launch.
- Map who controls each surface. Site, Google Business Profile, ads, booking platform, and the social account an ex-employee may still have the password to. Control is the test that decides who the advertiser is.
- Put the review in the contract, not in good intentions. If someone drafts on your behalf, checking what they produced is your obligation. That is either a process or it is nothing.
- Separate the two problems before paying anyone to fix either. A copywriter cannot resolve a question about authority to prescribe.
This article describes what published regulator guidance says and names the regulators involved. It is not legal advice, it does not assess any particular business's position, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer. Guidance was checked against Ahpra and TGA sources in August 2026; requirements change.