AHPRA's Enforcement Strategy: What 775 Advertising Complaints Actually Led To

There is no new AHPRA enforcement strategy for 2026. The written plan dates from December 2020. What has changed is how AHPRA uses it. In 2024/25 its advertising team looked at 775 complaints. Of the registered practitioners it wrote to, 74% fixed their ads early. Only 8 ended up with conditions on their registration. The tougher path, the Criminal Offences Unit, took 356 matters, mostly about companies and unregistered people. AHPRA also trialled AI to scan websites for breaches. So the real question for you is what a scan of your site would find.

Is there an AHPRA enforcement strategy for 2026?

No. There is one strategy paper, and it is old.

AHPRA's plan for checking and enforcing the ad rules started on 14 December 2020. It has not been rewritten since. It even still lists the old penalty figures. We covered that quirk in our post on what happens after an AHPRA advertising complaint. That post walks you through the letter, the 30 days and the steps after that.

So if you have seen a headline about a "2026 crackdown", take it with a grain of salt. The rules did not change, and neither did the paper.

What did change is what AHPRA actually does. And that gets counted. Each year AHPRA puts an annual report before state parliaments. The 2024/25 report covers the year to 30 June 2025. It gives the real numbers: how many complaints, letters, audits, conditions and court cases.

That report is the closest thing to a live enforcement plan. This post reads it for you.

How many advertising complaints did AHPRA handle in 2024/25?

The annual report says its advertising team looked at 775 complaints in the year.

How that number splits tells you the whole story.

Of those, 419 were "lower-risk complaints about registered health practitioners". Those took the gentle path. The person got a letter and a chance to fix it, and mostly nothing more happened.

The other 356 were "complaints about corporate entities or unregistered persons, or assessed as serious-risk complaints". In plain words, those were about companies, people who are not registered, or serious risks. They went to AHPRA's Criminal Offences Unit. Of them, 107 were about ads for health services. The rest were about people misusing specialist titles, or pretending to be registered practitioners.

Look at the bottom 2 bars again. Out of 775 complaints, only 8 people ended the year with conditions on their registration because of their ads. Three more got a caution.

So AHPRA would rather teach than punish. In its own words, "In most cases we take an educative approach to achieve compliance quickly." The numbers show it means it.

What happens to a registered practitioner who gets flagged?

You get a letter, then a check, then conditions if you ignore both.

The report says it plainly. When AHPRA finds a registered practitioner's advertising is non-compliant, "we provide them with information about where they have fallen short, along with an opportunity to correct it. We generally only take further regulatory action when this approach is unsuccessful."

Then it gives the rate. "Of the practitioners we contacted because of non-compliant advertising, 74% corrected their advertising early, such that further intervention was not required."

The other 26% got audited. AHPRA "audited 86 practitioners whose advertising remained non-compliant after being given an opportunity to correct it. Of these, 75 subsequently corrected their advertising."

That left 11 people. National Boards acted on them. Of those, 8 had conditions put on their registration and 3 were cautioned.

So here is how it plays out for you as a registered practitioner. You get a letter. If you fix it, it ends. If you do not, you get audited. If you still do not fix it, a condition goes on your registration and limits how you can advertise.

The 8 people with conditions did not have the worst copy. They were the ones who did not fix it after being asked twice. In this system the mistake itself rarely hurts you. Ignoring the letter does.

Why do companies go through a different door?

A company has no registration to put a condition on.

Every tool in the section above works on a registered person. A letter carries weight because the next step is a condition on their registration. A company that runs a clinic is not registered with anyone, and neither is a marketing agency. So AHPRA cannot put conditions on them. The only tool it has left is a court case.

That is why the report sends "complaints about corporate entities or unregistered persons" straight to the Criminal Offences Unit, along with the serious-risk matters. AHPRA does not think companies are worse. The gentle path just cannot reach them.

The unit's own figures for 2024/25 show where its time went.

• In total, 474 criminal offence complaints came in across all types. That was 13.3% fewer than the year before.
• The unit looked at 107 new complaints about ads. Most related to "the advertising of corporate entities or unregistered persons". That was 23.6% fewer than the year before.
• It closed 77 advertising complaints during the year.
• Of the complaints still open at 30 June, 61.0% were about misuse of protected titles. Another 36.0% were "advertising offences by corporate entities or unregistered persons".
• It finished 15 court cases. Of those, 14 ended in a guilty finding. One ended in a not guilty finding after a trial. Another 12 were still running at 30 June.

Two honest notes here. The report does not say how many of the 15 cases were about ads. Its own examples lean on fake practitioners and people who kept working while suspended. And fewer complaints coming in does not mean less enforcement. It just means fewer people wrote in.

The top penalties have not changed. The report states them: up to 3 years' jail and/or a $60,000 fine for a person, and a fine of up to $120,000 for a company. Those are the figures in section 133 of the National Law, the law behind the health ad rules. They are the most a court can give for each offence. The 2024/25 results above are what the year actually produced.

For you as a practice owner, the lesson is about who owns the ad. Whoever is named as running the ads on your site decides which door a complaint goes through. If the page reads as the practitioner's own ad, the letter path applies. If it reads as the trading company's, or an agency wrote and approved it, the company path applies. We cover how AHPRA works out whose ad it is in who is liable when a marketing agency writes your copy.

Which professions drew the most advertising offence complaints?

Medicine had the most by a long way, and nursing came next.

Table 29 of the report breaks the 107 advertising complaints down by profession. These are the ones that reached the Criminal Offences Unit under section 133. So they sit at the serious end of the scale. The 6 largest are below.

The table counts the profession linked to the complaint. That includes companies and unregistered people selling that profession's services. So the medical figure does not mean 68 doctors in trouble. It means 68 matters where someone thought a medical service was advertised unlawfully. Each one was serious enough, or company-run enough, to be sent on.

The year before, the same table recorded 140 received and 88 closed. In 2024/25 it was 107 and 77. So fewer complaints came in.

What changed in 2025, and what is coming?

Three things changed, and AHPRA only announced one of them.

The cosmetic guidelines. AHPRA published early copies of the Guidelines for advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures in June 2025. They started in September 2025. In the same year it looked at 59 complaints about cosmetic procedure ads. Its targeted audit of cosmetic surgery ads "assessed advertising for 93 practitioners and health services". If you run a cosmetic clinic, you are in a named focus area. Our AHPRA guide for cosmetic clinics covers the rules themselves.

The website that helped cancel a registration. The report describes a June tribunal decision in Queensland. It cancelled a doctor's registration after a cosmetic procedure went badly wrong. Among the findings: "the clinic website gave misleading information about his credentials". The website was only part of the case, but it was part. That is worth thinking about, because the credentials page is the page most clinics never check.

The AI trial. This one matters for every clinic, and it is a single sentence in the CEO's introduction. AHPRA has "trialled the use of artificial intelligence to scan social media and websites for advertising breaches".

Every step described above starts with a complaint. Someone has to write in. A scan changes that. It does not need an unhappy patient or a rival with a grudge. It just reads your page.

The report calls it a trial and gives no numbers. So do not expect a wave of letters tomorrow. But the direction is clear. AHPRA has started looking for breaches without waiting to be told.

What does risk-based enforcement mean for your website?

It means your website is the evidence, and a scan reads all of it at once.

Risk-based enforcement sorts each case by the harm it could do and by the history of whoever runs the ad. Low risk plus a quick fix ends with the file closed. High risk, a company or a repeat ends up with the Criminal Offences Unit. So you do not need a perfect record. You just never want to be the practice that leaves a known breach live.

Here are 5 things that follow from that.

Fix the whole pattern, as well as the flagged page. AHPRA follows up with audits. In 2024/25, 86 people were audited because their advertising "remained non-compliant" after a letter. If the same claim sits on six pages and you fix one, the audit finds the other five.

Treat the letter as the whole game. Of those AHPRA wrote to, 74% fixed it early and heard nothing more about that matter. The 8 with conditions are the ones who did not.

Know whose ad it is. If your trading company or your agency runs the ad, the gentle path may not apply. That is a good reason to get the copy right before it goes live. For a company, the safety net of a letter and 30 days is thinner.

Check the pages a scan would read first. Look at credentials, testimonials, before and after galleries, discounts and anything that promises a result. Those are the areas section 133 covers, and they are what a scanner is built to look for. What sets off a review is explained in why your website got flagged.

Write a version that follows the rules and still sells. You do not have to delete the line and leave a gap. Most flagged lines can become something factual that still sells your practice. The table below shows the swaps that come up most.

We hold every line in the right-hand column to the same standard as client copy. None uses a testimonial, promises a result or hints at a registration the person does not hold. They are also better marketing. Your patients want to know what happens in the room, and you can write that page fully within the rules.

The short version

The strategy paper is from 2020. The 2024/25 numbers show the strategy at work. AHPRA looked at 775 complaints, and 74% of practitioners fixed things after a letter. It audited 86 people and put 8 conditions on registrations. It sent 356 matters to the Criminal Offences Unit, mostly about companies and unregistered people. And it trialled AI that reads websites for breaches without waiting for a complaint.

So a mistake on your site is rarely what gets you hurt. Leaving it up is. Read your own pages the way a scan would. Then fix every one of them.

The full set of rules is in our AHPRA advertising guidelines guide for 2026.

This article sums up figures from the Ahpra and the National Boards annual report 2024/25, as tabled in the Queensland Parliament. It is general information, not legal advice. If you have received a letter from AHPRA, get advice from your professional indemnity insurer or a health law practitioner.