Ahpra - Enforce Your Advertising Requirements for Regulated Health Services
What constitutes misleading advertising, and how do circumcision clinics flout the rules?
Ahpra sets out the legislation, guidelines, penalties and their policies around misleading advertising on this webpage. The key restrictions under the relevant legislation, and a summary of how clinics flout these restrictions is provided below.
A person must not advertise a regulated health service or a business that provides a regulated health service, in a way that:
- is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to be misleading or deceptive.
Many clinics use statistics from cherry picked, outdated, non-evidence based and non-peered reviewed studies to mislead clients on the purported benefits. Almost all of them do not even quote the source – another requirement from Ahpra.
- offers a gift, discount or other inducement to attract a person to use the service or the business, unless the advertisement also states the terms and conditions of the offer
We have not yet observed any circumcision clinics offering gifts or other inducements.
- uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business
We have found many circumcision clinics that use testimonials on their websites.
- creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment
All of the purported benefits advertised by circumcision clinics in relation to infant circumcision on healthy children, given that any purported benefits are unsubstantiated and often highly disputed by government medical authorities.
- directly or indirectly encourages the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services
All promotion of the procedure itself, aside from a treatment of last resort for an existing issue falls under this category. Specifically, many clinics try to persuade clients to get it done now with false statistics around the medical requirement for circumcision later in life.
Registrar of circumcision clinics providing misleading advertising
Foreskin Revolution has begun to document the misleading claims of circumcision clinics in Australia, and reporting the clinics to Ahpra. Use the tabs below to filter based on the reporting status and the nature of the misleading claim.
Let us know!
Have you seen a circumcision clinic that advertises in a misleading way? Send us the details by clicking the button below.