Costs
Part of Reading Medical Practice Marketing With a Sceptical Eye
5 Things a Medical Practice Marketing Checklist Has to Cover
A medical practice marketing checklist should verify practice claims, the patient route, outreach consent under HIPAA, TCPA and CAN-SPAM, vendors, and reviews under FTC rules.
5 Things a Medical Practice Marketing Checklist Has to Cover
A medical practice marketing checklist should be run before every campaign, not once a year. It has five checks, each with items you can tick off: claims, the patient route, consent and channel rules, patient data and vendors, and reviews and proof. This is a planning aid, not legal advice.
Check 1: Every service claim still holds
The costliest mistake is publishing a service claim that no longer matches capacity, eligibility, hours, payer or access. Patients may act on a promise the practice cannot meet. Confirm each claim with the service owner before release.
- Each claim has a named source, a responsible owner, its limits and a last-confirmed date.
- Listings, the website and ads agree on services, hours and accepted insurance.
- Credentials such as "board certified" are accurate and permitted by your state medical board, whose advertising rules apply to physicians.
- Outcome and "best" claims can be supported. The FTC requires health advertising to be truthful and backed by evidence.
Reconcile online listings with service details instead of relying on one profile; local profile work is one check, not a substitute. If review exposes a real access gap, consider fixing access first before revising the promise.
Check 2: A patient can actually reach care
A correct page is not proof that patients can reach care. The phone, form, portal, scheduling step, arrival instructions or fallback route may still fail. Test the whole path before a campaign goes live, and compare what the patient sees with the route the practice expects.
| Patient-facing point | What to compare | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Listing | Service details and hours | Confirm against the current source |
| Call or form | Destination and next step | Test the route and fallback |
| Landing page | Service claim and contact route | Correct any mismatch |
| Scheduling and arrival | Instructions and available service | Verify with the responsible team |
- Someone places a real call and submits a real form, then books and follows the arrival instructions.
- A qualified clinical owner confirms emergency and clinical boundaries.
- A named person owns each failed step, and the promise is not changed to imply availability that does not exist.
A screenshot cannot show any of this, so approve the working route, not the picture.
Check 3: Outreach follows consent and channel rules
Audit the website, Google Business Profile, directories, email, text, phone, paid search and social as connected routes. Then check each channel against the rule that governs it.
- HIPAA marketinga communication that encourages a patient to buy or use a product or service is marketing, and using protected health information for it generally needs the patient's signed authorization. Treatment messages and the practice's own appointment reminders are generally not marketing unless a third party pays for them (45 CFR 164.501 and 164.508(a)(3)). See healthcare marketing compliance.
- TCPAmarketing texts and prerecorded or autodialed calls generally need the patient's prior express written consent, and opt-outs must be honored. The consent and opt-out rules for patient texting go through the details.
- CAN-SPAMcommercial email needs accurate sender and subject lines, a physical postal address and a working opt-out, honored within 10 business days.
- State rulesconsent for texts and recordings varies, as shown by how California, Washington and Florida differ.
Send uncertain service statements to qualified clinical owners rather than letting channel copy decide them.
Check 4: Patient data and vendors are covered
A signed agreement can be mistaken for blanket approval even when the practice has not assessed whether a business associate relationship applies. A vendor that creates, receives, maintains or transmits protected health information for the practice is a business associate and needs a written agreement.
- Each vendor's role and permitted uses are written down before launch.
- A business associate agreement review covers safeguards, incident reporting, subcontractors, return or destruction, and termination. HHS publishes sample business associate agreement provisions; the sample is not required and is not legal advice.
- Call tracking and analytics tools are checked for how they handle patient information, since the same product label can mean different services.
- Tracking pixels and forms do not send protected health information to ad platforms without an agreement.
- The website meets ADA and WCAG accessibility expectations, and accounts use multifactor authentication.
Check 5: Reviews, testimonials and proof
Patient testimonials and reviews are marketing, and two sets of rules apply. HIPAA treats a patient's story or photo as protected health information, so use it only with a signed authorization. The FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) require clear disclosure of any payment, free service or other connection to the person endorsing the practice.
- The FTC rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR Part 465) bans fake reviews and testimonials and the buying of positive reviews, so staff never post or purchase reviews.
- Replies to reviews do not confirm that the reviewer is a patient or reveal any health detail.
- Patient photos and quotes have a signed authorization on file, with its expiry date.
- After each campaign, record what was checked, who approved it and when, so the proof exists.
When a test or complaint exposes a recurring issue, assign a correction and check whether it appears in another channel. A correction log shows patterns in outreach problems, and the practice rechecks service facts and patient routes before reusing the affected campaign.
