AHPRA's advertising rules apply to your clinic's social media exactly as they apply to your website. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn are all advertising the moment they promote a regulated health service. The breaches clinics run most often are patient reviews and comments on pages they control, before-and-after photos, influencer partnerships, and naming prescription-only medicines. Section 133 of the National Law carries penalties up to $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a company, per offence. Here is what actually breaches the AHPRA social media guidelines, and how to fix each one.

Do AHPRA's advertising rules apply to social media?

Yes, and this is where most clinics get caught. There is a quiet assumption that AHPRA's rules govern your website and your printed ads, but that social media is somehow a personal, informal space where the rules relax. They do not.

The governing document is AHPRA's Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, in force since 14 December 2020. They apply to advertising "in any form," and AHPRA lists social media as one of those forms. AHPRA's separate social media guidance is blunt about it: the National Law, the Board's code of conduct and the advertising guidelines all apply to your social media use "just as when you interact in person."

It does not matter whether the post sits on the clinic's business account or a practitioner's personal profile. If the content promotes a regulated health service, the advertising rules attach to it. The platform changes. The law does not.

What does Section 133 actually ban?

Every social media rule below traces back to one section of the law. Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law makes it an offence to advertise a regulated health service in a way that:

Those five limbs are the whole game. A glowing patient comment about their results is a testimonial. A dramatic before-and-after is an unreasonable expectation of benefit. "Book now, only two spots left" encourages unnecessary use. The platform just changes how easily each one happens.

The penalties are real. Breaching Section 133 is a criminal offence, and the maximum penalty was increased to $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate, per offence, up from the original $5,000 and $10,000. Penalties are set by each state and territory's version of the National Law, so check the current figure for your jurisdiction. Separately, a breach can be treated as unsatisfactory professional conduct, which puts a practitioner's registration at risk. The full picture of what the guidelines cover is in my guide to the AHPRA advertising guidelines for 2026.

Are reviews and comments on your own pages a problem?

This is the single most misunderstood rule in healthcare social media, so read it slowly.

A testimonial that references clinical care is prohibited in advertising. On a social media page or profile that you control, comments and reviews are treated as part of your advertising, which makes you responsible for them. If your clinic's Facebook page has the reviews function switched on, or a patient comments "Dr X fixed my back pain, life-changing" under your post, that content is now sitting inside your advertising. AHPRA's position is that you may need to turn off the reviews function, or moderate and remove comments that describe clinical care.

Here is the part that saves clinics a lot of panic. AHPRA has said you are not expected to police unsolicited reviews on independent platforms you do not control. The standard example is Google reviews. You did not invite them, you cannot switch them off, and you are not responsible for them as advertising. The dividing line is control. Your own page's review function is your responsibility. An independent review site generally is not.

So the fix is not "beg patients to stop being nice." It is to turn off review functions on the pages you control, and to keep an eye on comments under your own posts. I go deeper on the whole testimonial question in what you can actually publish under the AHPRA testimonial rules.

What about before-and-after photos, shares and reposts?

Before-and-after content is the native language of clinic Instagram, and it is a minefield. These images easily breach Section 133 because they create an unreasonable expectation of benefit, or become misleading the moment they are filtered or flattering-angled. AHPRA's guidelines require that they not be edited, airbrushed or filtered, and that they show genuinely typical results with proper context. Most of what gets posted fails that test on the first hurdle.

The 2025 cosmetic procedure guidelines, in force since 2 September 2025, went further for that sector. Before-and-after images of under-18s are banned outright, and digital enhancement of advertising visuals is restricted. If you run a cosmetic account, assume the bar is now much higher than a nice grid. My breakdown of the specific rules is in before-and-after photos under AHPRA.

Sharing and reposting matters too. If you share, repost or otherwise adopt a patient's post that praises their clinical outcome, you make that testimonial your own advertising, and you become responsible for it. Reposting a happy patient's story is not a loophole around the testimonial rule. It is a way of publishing the testimonial yourself.

Can your clinic use influencers or paid partnerships?

Carefully, and in cosmetics, mostly not. The core principle applies across all regulated health services: you are responsible for content that a third party creates on your behalf. If an agency or an influencer makes a claim about your service, that claim is treated as your advertising. Handing the account to a marketing team does not hand off the liability. That is exactly the trap I described in what happens when a marketing agency meets AHPRA compliance.

For cosmetic procedures, the 2025 guidelines are stricter still. Using influencer testimonials to advertise those procedures is banned, and so is financially incentivising promotion, which includes offering free or discounted procedures in exchange for posts. The classic "we gave the influencer a free treatment and she posted about it" arrangement is now squarely prohibited in that sector.

For other services, an influencer talking about how a treatment fixed their symptoms is still a testimonial about clinical care, and still breaches the rule. The safest influencer content promotes the practitioner, the process and the practical details, never the clinical outcome.

The social posts that breach the rules, and the fix

Here is the pattern in one view. The left column is the everyday clinic post. The middle column is the rule it collides with. The right column is the compliant version that does the same job without the risk.

The social postWhy it breachesThe compliant version
Reposting a patient's results storyTestimonials Adopting a patient's clinical-outcome post makes it your advertising, and testimonials about clinical care breach Section 133. Share content about your process and your team. If a patient praises their results in a comment, moderate it rather than amplify it.
A before-and-after carouselOutcome imagery Creates an unreasonable expectation of benefit, and any filter or flattering edit makes it misleading. Banned for under-18s in cosmetics. Show how the treatment is done and who does it. Explain the process, the appointment and the aftercare instead of the outcome.
"Best clinic in Melbourne, painless results"Superlatives Claims of superiority and absolutes like "best," "safest" or "painless" create unreasonable expectations and are misleading. State qualifications, experience and what you actually do, in plain, checkable terms. Let the specifics do the persuading.
"Only 2 spots left this week, DM now"Urgency Pressure tactics are read as encouraging unnecessary use of a health service, and false scarcity is misleading conduct. State real availability honestly. "Appointments are usually available within the week" informs without pressuring.
Naming a prescription injectable in a ReelPrescription medicines Advertising prescription-only medicines to the public is prohibited under the Therapeutic Goods Act, on every channel including social. Advertise the consultation, never the substance. Talk about the appointment and the assessment, not the drug.
Paying an influencer for a glowing reviewInfluencers You are responsible for their claims. Influencer testimonials for cosmetic procedures are banned, and incentivised posts are prohibited. Brief any partner to describe the service and process only, with no clinical-outcome claim and no incentive attached.

Six everyday clinic posts, six compliance collisions. The offences are set out in the National Law and enforced by AHPRA, with prescription-medicine advertising enforced by the TGA.

None of this means your clinic has to go quiet. It means the compliant version of each post is more specific and more useful than the version it replaces. That is the same argument I make for websites in what your clinic can actually post under the TGA rules, which is the natural companion to this piece.

How do you make your clinic's social media compliant?

You do not need a lawyer on retainer to get most of the way there. You need to run one honest audit and fix the obvious breaches. A working checklist:

1. Turn off review functions on pages you control

Switch off the reviews tab on your Facebook page. You are responsible for testimonial content there, so the simplest fix is to remove the function entirely. Leave the independent platforms you cannot control, like Google, alone.

2. Moderate the comments under your own posts

Set a routine. When a patient comments about their treatment results, hide or remove that comment. Not because you are ungrateful, but because it is now advertising you are responsible for.

3. Retire the before-and-after grid

Replace outcome imagery with process content: the room, the equipment, the steps, the team. It is compliant, and it is what nervous patients actually want to see before they book.

4. Strip the superlatives and the urgency

Search your own captions for "best," "safest," "painless," "guaranteed" and "spots left." Every one of those is a rule waiting to be enforced. Swap them for plain facts.

5. Never name the prescription product

Talk about the consultation, the assessment and the practitioner. Do not name Schedule 4 medicines to the public. The TGA takes this one very seriously, and enforces it hard.

6. Put your agency and influencers on a written brief

Because you carry the liability for what they post, the brief has to spell out the rules: no testimonials, no outcome claims, no superlatives, no naming products. Get it in writing.

The rules are enforced, and not gently. In one documented case, a NSW practitioner pleaded guilty to 30 charges of unlawful advertising, including using testimonials, and was fined $45,000 plus costs in the Downing Centre Local Court in October 2018. AHPRA reported reaching its 100th criminal advertising prosecution in May 2023. Social media does not lower that risk. It raises it, because it is public, fast, and easy to screenshot.

Compliant social media is not silent social media. It is a clinic being genuinely useful, findable and clear, inside rules that were written to protect patients. Get the audit right once, build the habits, and the platform stops being a liability and starts being an asset.

This article is general information for education, not legal advice. For a ruling on a specific post, page or account, get advice from a lawyer experienced in health advertising law, or check AHPRA's advertising hub directly.