What Can You Actually Say on Social Media Under AHPRA's Rules?

Key Takeaways

• The AHPRA social media rules treat every post, story and reel as advertising, the same standard applies whether it's a billboard or a TikTok

• Testimonials about clinical care (symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, outcomes) are banned outright, even if they're glowing, true and posted by the patient themselves

• Comments about service, friendliness or wait times are fine, comments about whether the treatment actually worked are not

• Screenshotting a Google review onto your own social page turns a third party comment into your advertising, and your problem

• Used well, these restrictions actually become a competitive advantage, clinics that lean into education build more durable trust than ones chasing five star quotes

There's a particular flavour of innocent disaster that plays out in healthcare social media every week. A patient leaves a glowing comment, "Dr Lee fixed my shoulder in three sessions, can't recommend enough!", and the practice manager, delighted, hits "like," maybe even pins it to the top of the page.

Harmless, surely.

Except under the AHPRA social media rules, that comment just became part of the clinic's advertising, and it's now in breach of the National Law.

Nobody did anything malicious. They just didn't know the rule existed.

The line is clinical content, not enthusiasm

AHPRA doesn't ban positive feedback. It bans testimonials that touch on the clinical side of care, the symptom, the diagnosis, the treatment, or the outcome. "The staff were lovely and got me in quickly," fine, use it.

"My back pain is completely gone after two visits," that's a testimonial about clinical outcome, and it's off limits, even quoted verbatim from a real, happy patient.

This catches out far more practices than the obvious "before and after with a guarantee" type breach. The traps are quieter: a comment thread nobody moderated, a Google review screenshotted onto Instagram because it was a nice one, a reply that says "we're so glad we could fix that knee pain," which itself becomes a clinical claim, made by the clinic, in writing.

Where the confusion usually starts

Three spots cause most of the damage.

First, your own comments section, you're responsible for what sits there, so an unmoderated "this treatment changed my life" needs removing, not celebrating.

Second, repurposing reviews, a Google review sitting on Google is generally outside AHPRA's reach, but the moment you feature it on your own page, you've made it advertising.

Third, titles and claims, "specialist," "expert," or unqualified comparative language ("the best results in Brisbane") needs to be earned through formal recognition, not assumed through confidence.

Using the rules to your advantage

Here's the genuinely useful bit: these restrictions push every compliant clinic toward the same strategy, education over endorsement. A competitor leaning on testimonials is one complaint away from a takedown notice. A clinic that instead explains why a treatment works, what to expect, and how to choose between options builds something a testimonial never could, a reputation for knowing its subject.

That content doesn't expire when a regulator tightens enforcement, because it was never relying on the loophole in the first place.

The practical move is simple, turn off review functions you can't moderate where that's possible, brief whoever manages your socials on the symptom, diagnosis, treatment, outcome test, and redirect the urge to showcase praise into the urge to showcase knowledge.

The second one is more durable, and it happens to be exactly the kind of content that earns long term trust rather than a quick, risky hit of social proof.

Contact us if you think we can help your practice build credibility, trust and patients.