Compliance as construction, not review
Most clinic websites handle advertising rules by having someone read every page nervously before it goes live. That works until the third practitioner edits their own bio, or the marketing intern adds a review widget, or a template designed abroad ships with a testimonials section. The alternative is to build the site so the rules are enforced by its structure: the fields, templates and settings make the compliant version the easy one and the non-compliant version hard to produce.
Here is how that looks in practice. It is a method, not legal advice; the regulator's current guidance for your country is the authority.
1. Titles and registration are fields, not free text
Practitioner records have separate fields for name, title, discipline and registration number. The template renders them in a fixed pattern: "Sam Lee, Physiotherapist, HCPC PH123456" or "Dr Sam Lee (Chiropractor), GCC 01234". The title field is a dropdown limited to what the regulator permits for each discipline in your country. A practitioner cannot type "Dr" if their discipline may not use it, and cannot type "Specialist" unless the specialist registration field is filled.
Registration numbers are required fields; a profile cannot publish without one. The regulator's register link is generated from the number.
2. Testimonials are a setting, switched per country
The template has a reviews section. Whether it renders, and what it renders, is a site-level setting:
- Australia (AHPRA): off. No testimonials about clinical care on the site. The section renders qualifications and professional memberships instead. Links to third-party review platforms handled according to current AHPRA guidance.
- Canada: per province; several colleges restrict testimonials. Off by default, enabled only where the college permits and with the content rules applied.
- UK, US, most of the EU: on, pulling genuine reviews from Google or a review platform, with the content filtered for outcome claims and with the source shown.
Nobody at the clinic can paste a testimonial into a page, because there is no free-text testimonial field. The one place reviews appear is governed by the setting.
3. Templates carry the safe phrasing
Condition and service pages are built from templates whose section headings are chosen to steer the writing: "How we assess", "How we treat", "What to expect", not "Results" or "Success rate". The writing guide in the CMS beside each field says: describe what you do; avoid cure, fix, guarantee, best, painless. A short list of preferred verbs sits above the body field.
Before-and-after images, if the clinic uses them, are a dedicated gallery type with a mandatory consent flag and a fixed disclaimer rendered beneath, not images in the body of a page.
4. Prices and offers carry their terms
Price fields have a companion "conditions" field that renders alongside whenever the price is shown. An offer or discount is its own record with mandatory fields for terms, validity dates and eligibility, rendered together. An offer without terms cannot be published.
5. Privacy and forms are structural
The enquiry form has fixed fields: name, contact, message, and an optional preferred practitioner. There is no way to add a health question to it through the CMS. Health intake is routed to the practice system's forms. The privacy notice is a required page linked automatically from every form and the footer, with a per-country template covering GDPR, HIPAA, the Australian Privacy Principles or PIPEDA as applicable. Cookie consent is on for regions that require it.
6. The country profile
All of the above is driven by one setting: the clinic's country (and, where relevant, state or province). Choosing it sets the title dropdowns, the testimonial mode, the privacy notice template, the cookie behaviour, the accessibility statement template, and the regulator names and register URL patterns. A clinic in Melbourne and a clinic in Manchester run the same site structure with different profiles.
7. Sign-off, still
Structure removes most risk; a human removes the rest. Each new condition or service page passes a two-minute checklist by the clinic's named compliance owner before publication: true, no outcome promises, titles right, offers with terms, images consented, plain words. The CMS has a "reviewed by" field that must be filled to publish. It is quick because the structure has already done the heavy lifting.
What this achieves
- A practitioner can edit their own bio without a compliance review, because the fields they can edit cannot produce a title or registration error.
- A marketing hire cannot add a testimonials widget in a country that forbids them.
- Every price shows its terms; every offer shows its conditions.
- Health data never enters a general form.
- The site can be audited by reading the settings and the templates rather than every page.
Where this sits
This is how the clinic websites we build handle health advertising rules: a country profile, field-level constraints, templates that steer the writing, and a sign-off step that is short because the structure has already enforced most of the rules. The clinic writes about what it does, in the patient's words, and the site keeps it within the lines.