The short answer
A doctor may inform. A doctor may not solicit.
Almost everything a patient actually wants to know is permitted. What is barred is the promise, the cure claim, the bought review and the superlative, and none of those was what the patient came looking for.
Permitted
Qualifications, procedures, timings, fees, real photographs, genuine reviews
Barred
Outcome promises, cure claims for scheduled conditions, bought reviews, superlatives
Where the line sits
What are the doctor advertising rules in India?
Seven separate frameworks, of which the National Medical Commission conduct code is only the first. The word that matters across all of them is soliciting, and no instrument defines it precisely, which is why the safe test is different from the legal one.
The working test
Describe what you do and you are almost always inside the rules. Promise what will happen to the patient and you are almost always outside them. Every framework here bars the same thing in a different register: a claim the reader cannot check for themselves.
Six conditions, all of them
Under what conditions is the answer yes?
Six, and they are cumulative rather than a menu. Satisfy all six and ordinary marketing is available to you. Fail any one and the answer flips, regardless of how well the other five are handled.
If
Everything you publish is a description, not a promise
A page explaining what an endoscopy is, how long it takes and what recovery looks like is information. A page saying you will feel better within a week is a claim about a specific person's outcome, and it is the shape the Consumer Protection Act treats as misleading.
The test
Could a patient check this sentence for themselves before booking?
If
You never claim a cure for a scheduled condition
The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954 names conditions for which a cure may not be advertised at all. This is criminal law rather than a professional code, it is the oldest instrument governing you, and ordinary marketing language breaks it more often than anything else here.
The test
Does any sentence promise the condition will be cured or permanently removed?
If
No superlative appears anywhere on the site
Best, top, number one, leading. A superlative you cannot substantiate is the textbook shape of a misleading claim, and it sits badly with a conduct code that bars soliciting. It is also the single commonest breach on Indian clinic websites, which is not the same as it being safe.
The test
If challenged, could you produce evidence that you are the best?
If
Every review is genuine and unpaid
Asking a real patient is ordinary practice. Buying a review, offering a discount for one, or writing them in house is what BIS IS 19000:2022 and the Consumer Protection Act are aimed at. India was the first country in the world to standardise this, so the position here is clearer than in most jurisdictions.
The test
Did anything of value change hands for any review on your profile?
If
No patient is identifiable in anything you publish
Before and after images, outcome testimonials and case photographs fail twice over. They publicise a case, which the conduct code treats as boasting of cures, and they involve identifiable health information, which the DPDP Act, 2023 governs. Consent solves the second problem and leaves the first untouched.
The test
Could a stranger work out who this patient is, or what was wrong with them?
If
You endorse no product carrying your name
The conduct code is written tightly around this: no approval, recommendation, endorsement, certificate or report for a drug, remedy, appliance or commercial product given in connection with your name, signature or photograph, in any mode of advertising. It follows the practitioner, so a personal social account is not outside it.
The test
Is your name or face attached to somebody else's product anywhere?
All six, or none
These are gates rather than a scorecard. A clinic that satisfies five of six is not eighty three percent compliant. It has one open exposure, and it is usually the third one.
Consequences
What happens if a doctor gets this wrong?
Three different things, from three different directions, and they do not arrive together. The one that matters most is the one that attaches to your registration rather than to your bank account.
Professional
A complaint to the state medical council
Made against the registered practitioner, not against the agency, the web designer or the platform. None of them holds a registration that can be acted on. This is the exposure that cannot be insured away or delegated.
Consumer
Action under the Consumer Protection Act
The Central Consumer Protection Authority can act on misleading advertisement, and it has issued notices and imposed penalties across sectors. That enforcement is not healthcare specific, and this page does not claim it is.
Platform
An advertising account suspended
The fastest and least serious of the three. Google or Meta simply stop your ads, often without a clear reason and usually at the worst moment. It is worth remembering that platform approval is not legal permission.
The asymmetry worth naming
The agency writes the copy, the platform approves the ad, and the doctor holds the registration a complaint is made against. That is the whole reason to read your own marketing before it goes out rather than after somebody objects to it.
Said plainly
Why do so many clinic websites break these rules?
Because breaking them looks normal. Open ten clinic websites in any Indian city and most will carry a superlative in the first heading, and the agencies that built them are competing on the same phrases.
01
Everybody else does it
A doctor whose competitors all say best reasonably concludes that best is allowed. Volume is not permission, and the fact that enforcement is uneven does not make the rule optional.
02
The agency was never told to care
A general digital agency writes healthcare copy the way it writes copy for a restaurant, because nothing in its normal work involves a Schedule of conditions or a conduct code. It carries no liability either way.
03
The rules are spread across seven documents
No single page tells a doctor what applies. They sit across a 2002 code, a 1954 Act, consumer law, a BIS standard, a data protection Act, telemedicine guidance and two platform policies. Assembling that is a job, and almost nobody has done it.
04
Nothing happened last year
Enforcement is uneven, so a breach that has sat on a homepage for three years feels settled. It is not settled. It is unnoticed, and the two are different in exactly the way that matters when somebody finally objects.
Practical
What should you do about a site that already breaks them?
Fix the heading first, then the claims, then the reviews. Most of it is a rewrite rather than a rebuild, and in our experience the ranking cost of removing a superlative is close to nothing because it carries almost no search intent of its own.
1
Read your own H1 out loud
If it contains best, top or number one, that is the first edit. Replace it with what you actually are: your speciality, your qualification and your city.
2
Search your site for promise words
Guaranteed, permanent, complete cure, painless, 100 percent. Each one is either a claim you can substantiate or a sentence to cut, and usually it is the second.
3
Remove patient images and outcome testimonials
Replace them with photographs of the clinic, the equipment and the team. Those do the same trust work and identify nobody.
4
Stop any paid or incentivised review flow
Replace it with one repeatable ask made to every genuine patient at the same point in the visit. Slower, and the only version that is defensible.
Check the wording
Where can you read the rules yourself?
Here. Every instrument with a public primary source is linked to the government page itself, never to a summary of it.
Primary sources
- National Medical Commission, Code of Medical Ethics Regulations, 2002
- Press Information Bureau on the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 coming into force
- Press Information Bureau on BIS IS 19000:2022, online consumer reviews
- Press Information Bureau on CCPA action against misleading advertisements
- National Medical Commission, Registered Medical Practitioner conduct regulations, 2023, status contested
The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954, the DPDP Act, 2023 and the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines, 2020 are described here from their published text. The 2023 conduct regulations are linked because they exist and are relevant, not because this page takes a position on their current status.
FAQ
What else do doctors ask about this?
Yes. A site that states who you are, what you treat, your timings and your fees is information, and the 2002 code expressly permits formal announcements including a public declaration of charges. What creates the problem is the promise and the superlative, not the website.
Doctors do, within both the platform policy and the six conditions above. Remember the two layers are independent: an ad approved by Google can still breach the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, because Google is not enforcing Indian medical law.
It is an unsubstantiated superlative, which is the shape the Consumer Protection Act treats as misleading, and it is condition three above. It is also extremely common. Being common and being safe are different things, and the fix costs almost nothing in ranking terms.
Consent addresses the data protection side and leaves the conduct side untouched, because the code bars publicising cases and cures regardless of who agreed. This is the point most clinics get wrong: permission from the patient is not permission under the code.
The conduct code follows the practitioner rather than the channel, and the endorsement provision is written around your name, signature or photograph appearing in any mode of advertising. A personal account carrying your registration is not outside it.
Not for the consequence that matters most. A conduct complaint is made against a registered practitioner, and an agency holds no registration to act against. Read what goes out in your name, and choose an agency that expects you to.
Patients do search superlative phrases, so the term is not worthless. What you can do is answer that intent without making the claim yourself, by being genuinely the most specific and best documented answer for the condition rather than by asserting a ranking you cannot evidence.
On the pillar page, which sets each one out with what it rules out, what it still allows and who enforces it. Medical advertising rules in India, framework by framework
Next step
Want your own site checked against the six?
Send us the address and we will tell you which conditions it fails and quote the wording back to you. Free, three working days, and worth having even if you never work with us.