Telehealth Marketing in Australia: The Two Promises That Get Clinics Fined

Telehealth marketing in Australia is capped by two separate rules, and the fastest-growing telehealth brands keep breaking both. Naming a prescription medicine to the public is prohibited under the Therapeutic Goods Act, and in July 2024 the TGA issued 21 infringement notices totalling $319,260 over exactly that, to businesses it described as including online telehealth clinics. Separately, the Medical Board of Australia says prescribing without a real-time consultation is not good practice and is not supported by the Board, which puts the no-appointment-needed promise offside. Here is what each regulator owns, and what a telehealth practice can say instead.

Is a telehealth website advertising, or just a description of a service?

It is advertising, and the enforcement record settles it.

On 12 July 2024 the TGA issued 21 infringement notices totalling $319,260 to 4 businesses and 3 individuals for the alleged unlawful advertising of prescription-only medicines, primarily for weight loss, on their websites. The TGA said the notices "were issued to businesses including online telehealth clinics and medical practices offering telehealth services".

Read that sentence again. The regulator did not go looking for ad campaigns. It looked at websites.

Here is the ledger from that action.

The TGA listed four things it alleged each business did. They promoted the use and supply of prescription-only medicines including weight loss and erectile dysfunction medicines such as Ozempic, Saxenda and Viagra. They advertised weight loss medicines outside of their approved use. They stated that certain prescription-only medicines were TGA approved. And they stated that certain therapeutic goods were safe.

Three of those four are things a copywriter does without thinking. Naming the product is normal. Saying it is approved sounds like reassurance. Saying it is safe sounds like care.

What did the TGA fine Midnight Health for?

The Midnight Health action is the one to read if you run a telehealth brand, because it is recent, it is large, and it names the platforms.

On 29 September 2025 the TGA issued 10 infringement notices totalling $198,000 to Midnight Health Pty Ltd over the alleged unlawful advertising of prescription-only weight-loss medicines. The company paid them in September 2025.

The TGA says Midnight Health "operated telehealth platforms such as Youly, Stagger, and hub.health where it advertised prescription-only weight-loss medicines to the public between June 2024 and January 2025", and that the websites "allegedly promoted the use and supply of Schedule 4 prescription-only medicines, including tirzepatide and semaglutide".

There was a second problem on top of naming the drugs. The TGA says the advertisements "made unapproved references to the treatment of serious diseases or conditions, such as anxiety and stroke", which are prohibited and restricted representations.

A fine is a number on a page. An undertaking is a year of somebody checking your marketing.

The mechanism behind all of this is the same one covered in our guide to advertising prescription medicines in Australia, and the weight-loss lane specifically in whether you can advertise weight loss medication.

Can you advertise a prescription without a phone call?

This is the second cap, and it comes from a different regulator entirely.

The Medical Board of Australia's guidelines, Telehealth consultations with patients, contain a section titled "Prescribing or providing healthcare if you have never had a real-time consultation with the patient". It opens like this:

Prescribing or providing healthcare for a patient without a real-time direct consultation, whether in-person, via video or telephone, is not good practice and is not supported by the Board.

Then it names the exact business model:

This includes asynchronous requests for medication communicated by text, email, live-chat or online that do not take place in the context of a real-time continuous consultation and are based on the patient completing a health questionnaire, when the practitioner has never spoken with the patient.

Now hold that against the marketing. "Answer a few questions and get your script." "No appointment needed." "Skip the waiting room." Those lines sell speed, and speed is exactly what the Board says is not good practice when it removes the real-time consultation.

The guidelines leave two doors open, and both matter. A practitioner who prescribes in these circumstances "must be able to explain how the prescribing and the management of the patient was appropriate and necessary in the circumstances". And the Board recognises it may be appropriate for a patient's usual medical practitioner, or another practitioner with access to the clinical record, to prescribe without a consultation in certain circumstances.

Both doors are about a clinical judgement in a specific case. Neither is a marketing proposition you can put on a landing page.

Is telehealth allowed to market itself as a GP replacement?

Not as a routine one. The Board says so in its own background section.

Telehealth provides great opportunities for access to, and delivery of healthcare. The Board supports the responsible and safe use of telehealth. However, it is not appropriate for all medical consultations and should not be considered as a routine substitute for in-person consultations.

It goes further. The Board considers that "when practical, video consultations are preferable to telephone consultations", and that telehealth "is generally most appropriate in the context of a continuing clinical relationship with a patient that also involves in-person consultations".

That is an awkward sentence for a brand whose whole pitch is that you never have to go anywhere.

But the guidelines are not hostile to telehealth, and this is where a lot of clinics overcorrect. The Board states plainly that these guidelines "do not prevent or discourage one-off telehealth consultations", and it names the situations it supports: episodic and emergency care, rural and remote settings, patients who are unable to travel, and patients who cannot consult their usual doctor.

So there is a compliant positioning available. It is access, not replacement.

What does the Medical Board require a patient to know before they book?

This is the part nobody in marketing reads, and it is the part that writes your booking page for you.

The guidelines set out what a practitioner should ensure before a telehealth consultation. The patient should be informed of the alternatives to a telehealth consultation. The patient should have had the billing arrangements explained and provided financial consent, including whether they can access Medicare rebates and any gap payments. The patient should know they can have support persons present, including family, carers and interpreters. The patient should be informed they may need to be seen in person if the doctor considers a telehealth consultation alone is not appropriate.

During the consultation, the practitioner should tell the patient who they are and explain their specialty, their principal place of practice, and their role in the patient's care.

Every one of those is a content requirement hiding inside a clinical guideline. Most telehealth booking pages fail at least three of them, and the most common failure is price. A page that leads with a "from" price, with no explanation of whether Medicare applies and no mention of gap payments, has not given a patient what they need to give financial consent.

What can a telehealth practice actually advertise?

Plenty. The constraint is on naming products and promising shortcuts, not on describing your service.

Here is the swap, line by line.

The right column is not a consolation prize. "You speak to an Australian-registered doctor in real time, without leaving the house" is a stronger promise than "answer a few questions", because it is the thing patients actually want and it is the model the Board supports.

Keep the timing language qualified while you are at it. "Same day", "no wait" and "available now" are promises the business cannot always keep, and an absolute availability claim is misleading conduct under Australian Consumer Law even when the compliance lanes above are clean. "Appointments are usually available within [X]" says the same thing and stays true on a bad week.

The testimonial rule in the last row is the one people forget applies here at all. It sits in the National Law, not the Act, and it is covered in our guide to the AHPRA advertising guidelines. Social channels carry both regimes at once, which is the subject of the TGA and your clinic's social media.

Which regulator owns which sentence on a telehealth page?

Three of them, at once, and they do not overlap neatly. This is the mapping worth pinning above the desk of whoever writes the copy.

Clearing one does not clear the others. A page can name no medicines at all, carry no testimonials, and still promise a model of care the Medical Board does not support.

The wider Code that sits behind the first row is covered in our breakdown of the TGA advertising code.

Where should a telehealth practice start?

With a page audit, not a campaign.

Three passes, in this order. First, search your own site for every medicine name, every instance of "TGA approved", and every instance of "safe". That is the TGA lane, and it is where the money penalties are.

Second, search for every promise of speed that removes a step: "no appointment", "no consult", "answer a few questions", "instant script". That is the Medical Board lane.

Third, check whether your booking page tells a patient the things the Board says they must know before consenting: the alternatives, the billing, the support persons, the possibility of being asked to come in.

Most telehealth sites fail the first pass. Almost all of them fail the third.

None of this makes the marketing weaker. The record is quite specific about what got fined, and none of it was "we will connect you with an Australian-registered doctor by video, without you leaving the house". That sentence was always available. The businesses in the ledger above chose to name the drug instead.

This article explains a regulatory landscape. It is general information, not legal advice. If you are unsure which rules apply to your service or your practice, get advice from a health law practitioner or your professional association.

Written by

Amisha Sharma

Amisha Sharma writes compliance checked healthcare copy for Australian practices and agencies. She built GhostRank, the 226 check audit engine, and every piece she ships carries its evidence report.

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