THE Pharmacy Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has published a new "Advertising compliance and enforcement strategy," with the document detailing the management of advertising complaints and the regulatory powers available to deal with breaches of the National Law.
"It is a professional obligation for registered health practitioners to advertise responsibly and support members of the community to make informed choices about their healthcare," AHPRA ceo Martin Fletcher said.
"I expect that implementation of this strategy will further improve how regulated health services are advertised so that healthcare consumers are better informed," he said.
"When preparing their advertising, a health practitioner should always put the consumer first and ensure that their advertising is not false, misleading or deceptive in any way."
Supporting the new strategy and building on previous education and enforcement work, National Boards and the AHPRA have said they will be publishing new materials in coming weeks to help health practitioners understand their advertising obligations legally and professionally.
"We recognise that most health practitioners want to comply with the law and their professional obligations, and we aim to make compliance as easy as possible," Fletcher said.
"We will continue to provide information to practitioners and their professional organisations to help them understand their advertising obligations."
Specifically, under the National Law, a regulated health service or a business providing such a service must not advertise in a way that is false, misleading or deceptive, uses gifts, discounts or inducements without full explanation, uses a testimonial, creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment, and/or directly or indirectly encourages the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services.
Restrictions also apply around advertising a health practitioner as a specialist when they do not hold registration as a specialist or as an endorsed practitioner.
Full details are at ahpra.gov.au.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 21 Apr 17
To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 21 Apr 17