Is Your Clinic AHPRA Compliant?

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Your 2025 guide for a safe, compliant clinic

Over the past six months, compliance has moved from quiet consideration to defining conversation in Australia’s aesthetic industry, with every clinic called to lift the standard of how they communicate with care.

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Today, across the words published, the testimonials gathered, and the images shared, regulatory safety needs to be considered with correctness. Phrasing that was once regularly used, such as ‘non-invasive’, ‘painless’, or ‘guaranteed results’, can now sit in the category of misleading under current guidance.

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While this may feel like a overwhelming new bar to reach, it’s also an invitation: to communicate with more clarity, educate with intent, and build trust in a way that strengthens your reputation for the long term.

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At DappleOS, we recognise both the weight of these expectations and the realities of running a clinic where time is precious and standards must be met seamlessly. That is why our platform is designed to enable compliance quietly in the background, so you and your team work with confidence, not compromise.

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Guidelines matter for all clinics of all sizes

Regulators look closely at anything a patient may see, which includes websites, booking flows, emails, social posts, and the captions beneath before-and-after images. The aim is not to silence clinical storytelling, rather it is to ensure that what is shared is fair, factual, and complete, so patients can make informed choices that respect their safety and their context.

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DappleOS bridges that space between regulation and the flow of a clinical day; Templates can be pre-approved, consent can travel with the patient journey, and restricted terms can be quietly locked away from public-facing channels.

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Compliance builds stronger clinics

Good clinic governance isn’t simply about avoiding breaches; it’s about creating an experience patients recognise as professional, considerate and safe. When your information is balanced, consent is explicit, and your records are complete, patients feel well-looked after and clinicians feel supported, and that foundation becomes a growth advantage because trust compounds.

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Compliance is part of modern care, and when you choose technology that enables good practice rather than only reacting when things go wrong, your team can focus on people with peace of mind, knowing the proper safeguards are already at work in every note, message and image.

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2025 compliance checklist

Where to start and what to look for

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A simple way to stay aligned with current expectations is to bring a few guiding habits into daily work:

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Website and booking

1. Prioritise factual, balanced descriptions, avoid words that imply guarantees, and keep the tone educational, rather than promotional.

AHPRA requires advertising to be accurate, not misleading, and to avoid implying certain or guaranteed outcomes. Phrases like “painless”, “risk-free”, “scarless”, or “permanent” can be problematic because they suggest an outcome and downplay risk.

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2. Present practitioner details so patients can clearly identify who is responsible for the procedure, and keep those details current.

Under the new higher-risk cosmetic procedure advertising guidance, advertisements must include information about the practitioner performing the procedure. DappleOS maintains live practitioner records with credentials, so profiles and attributions remain accurate across pages and forms.

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3. Provide clear information about risks, recovery, and suitability in places patients naturally read it, including at booking.

AHPRA expects balanced information that does not trivialise procedure risks or recovery, particularly for higher-risk non-surgical procedures.

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Email, SMS, and patient messaging

1. Keep patient-facing content factual and balanced, and do not reference prescription-only medicines in public or promotional messages.

The TGA prohibits advertising prescription-only medicines to the general public, which includes promotional emails and SMS to patients, even if the audience feels “warm”.

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2. Collect patient feedback for quality improvement, but do not publish testimonials about clinical outcomes in your advertising.

AHPRA’s National Law prohibits using testimonials or purported testimonials to advertise regulated health services.

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3. Honour marketing opt-ins and keep an auditable trail of consent across channels.

While consent for marketing sits under Australian privacy and spam laws rather than AHPRA or the TGA, maintaining explicit, auditable permission is a core compliance practice for clinics.

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Social media and imagery

1. Avoid influencer or ambassador endorsements, and steer away from promotional devices that could mislead. Prioritise calm, educational content that provides context.

AHPRA’s 2025 update strengthens the ban on testimonials from social media influencers and requires practitioner identification in advertising for higher-risk procedures.

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2. Don’t trivialise or glamourise procedures with entertainment cues, and ensure any imagery is contextualised so it does not imply guaranteed results.

The new guidance explicitly targets trivialisation and glamourisation, especially on social media. If you use before-and-after style material in private clinical settings, keep it educational, include variability context, and avoid any suggestion of a promised outcome.

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3. Keep prescription medicine references out of public content, and store product and batch details inside clinical notes.

The TGA prohibits advertising prescription-only medicines to the public, and recent guidance on cosmetic injectables reinforces that point.

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Where clinics most often slip

Most issues are unintentional. An older caption remains live, a well-meant phrase suggests certainty, or a testimonial about outcomes finds its way onto a public page. The current enforcement environment leaves limited room for ambiguity, which is why a proactive approach is kinder to your team and safer for your brand.

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Where DappleOS enables compliance

From a patient’s first click to their final follow-up, DappleOS is designed to keep your communications respectful, accurate, and traceable. In practice, that looks like:

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• Consent and risk statements that can be embedded across the journey in forms and booking links, so transparency is consistent and visible.
• Communication templates, like email and SMS, that can be pre-approved and saved for easy use, encouraging language that is balanced and compliant.
• Traceable links between procedures, prescribers, and patients, so chain of care is always clear.
• A clean separation between clinical data and public content, which lowers the risk of accidental disclosure and keeps prescription detail where it should stay.

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Compliance doesn’t need to be a daily scramble, it should feel like a steady scaffold that supports the way you already work. With the right system, it becomes exactly that - a calm, reliable framework that protects patients, empowers teams, and strengthens your clinic’s reputation over time.

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