How can you ensure that your practice stands out against the rest while remaining on the right side of the regulators? Leo Briggs explains the principles of ethical marketing.
Effective marketing is essential to ensure your practice and its services are visible to as many potential patients as possible, but you don’t want to waste money on campaigns that have to be withdrawn or end up damaging your professional reputation.
The following five tips will help you balance promoting your practice with your ethical and legal obligations.
1. Check claims are not misleading
While you may be employing a marketing agency, the GDC still expects you to take responsibility for checking that information containing your name is accurate, not misleading and complies with its GDC’s guidance on ethical advertising.
This expressly requires you to: ‘Use clear language that patients are likely to understand; back up claims with facts; avoid ambiguous statements; and avoid statements or claims intended or likely to create an unjustified expectation about the results you can achieve.’
In addition to the GDC, you must ensure that your marketing complies with the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has the power to remove any advert found to contravene the code and can refer persistent offenders to trading standards. The CAP provides specific guidance on the documentary evidence required to make dental and cosmetic claims and you can find further guides for dental professionals on its website covering areas such as teeth whitening and non-surgical facial aesthetic treatments.
If you’re unsure whether your promotion is within the rules you can use the CAP checking service or contact your dental defence organisation.
2. Don’t advertise POMs
You must not promote prescription-only medicines (POMs) such as botulinum toxin injections to the public, even if they are going to be administered by a registered healthcare professional. This applies to all forms of advertising, such as practice websites, posters and leaflets, as well as social media.
CAP guidance also warns: ‘There’s no getting round [the rules] by tweaking the product’s name (beautox is an example) or even leaving it out altogether and referring to anti-wrinkle injections if what you’re offering is Botox.’ The ASA can take enforcement action against those who fail to comply which can include referral to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
If you offer botulinum toxin injections at your practice the CAP also says you can promote consultations, provided it’s clear that this is to discuss various treatment options ‘and a product won’t be sold or administered if a customer isn’t suitable’. You can also provide factual information about the product on your website, but not on your home page.
3. Get informed consent
Before and after images are often used to promote dental and cosmetic services but you must ensure patients are happy for their confidential information to be used in this way and they should not be identifiable unless absolutely necessary.
For consent to be valid, you need to ensure the patient understands precisely what information will be retained, displayed or published, where and when, who will see it and the likely consequences.
Patients must also know that they can withdraw their consent at any time and be able to do so. For this reason, particular care should be taken with using images in online marketing, where this may be more difficult to monitor and enforce.
The CAP has specific guidance on the use of before and after images and patient testimonials covering the need to retain signed and dated proof that the images are genuine with contact details for the person featured and the potentially misleading use of pre- and post-production techniques for example, retouching ‘after images’. As above, you can’t use before and after images to show the effectiveness of POMs.
4. Take care with third party promotions
In principle, it’s okay to promote your practice with offers such as a free initial consultation, provided the terms and conditions are clear but the GDC has warned about the use of promotions on social media sites.
It says: ‘If you promote your services on marketing or social networking websites, you must make clear that the treatment advertised may not be appropriate for every patient and that it is conditional on a satisfactory assessment being carried out. You must assess the patient, obtain appropriate consent, obtain a medical history and explain all the options before carrying out any work.’
5. Beware of potentially misleading titles
You cannot use the words ‘specialist’, ‘specialises’ or ‘specialising’ when referring to yourself or your practice unless you are on the appropriate GDC specialist list. However, the GDC says you ‘may use the terms “special interest in..”, “experienced in…” or “practice limited to…”’
The GDC allows dentists to use the title ‘Dr’ provided it is made clear that this is a courtesy title only and it is not otherwise implied they are qualified to carry out medical procedures. The CAP says particular care is needed when providing injectable aesthetic treatments and that ‘the safest and simplest way to avoid confusing consumers is to avoid the Dr title unless a general medical qualification is held’.
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