Guide

The private clinic website checklist

Fourteen questions to run your own site against, covering compliance, enquiries and the technical basics.

The short answer: a private clinic website has to do two jobs at once. It has to let a patient find you, understand what you offer and get in touch, and it has to do that without breaching the rules that apply to a regulated practice. The questions below cover both. Note where the answer is no.

Does the site say who you are and how you are registered?

Is there a named practitioner profile for every clinician who sees patients, with their professional registration details stated so a patient can check the register? Does it describe qualifications and current role in terms that match the register? The GMC requires that patients are given honest information about a doctor’s qualifications and professional status, and the profile page is where that is tested.

Source: GMC, guidance on cosmetic interventions, read 11 September 2026.

Do the treatment pages tell the truth about risk and recovery?

Does each procedure or treatment page describe what the treatment involves, who it is for, what the risks are, and what recovery looks like, in roughly equal measure? A page that describes the result and not the risk creates the impression of a risk-free procedure without using the words. Does any page make a claim about outcome that you could not substantiate if asked? The CAP code requires that marketing does not mislead and that cosmetic procedure marketing does not trivialise risk.

Source: ASA and CAP, guidance on the marketing of surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures, read 11 September 2026.

Does the site say what things cost and who pays?

Is there a published fees position, even if it is a from-price with a clear statement of what it covers? Is insurer recognition stated? Where surgical fees depend on the hospital and the anaesthetist, does the page say so?

Can a patient, a GP or a colleague actually reach you?

Does the enquiry form deliver to an inbox that someone reads, or straight into the practice management software? Is there a separate route for GP and consultant referrals, so a referring clinician is not filling in a form written for patients?

Does any page break an advertising rule?

• Is any prescription-only medicine named anywhere on the site to promote a treatment? The MHRA position is that advertising a prescription-only medicine to the public is unlawful.
• Does any page describe a procedure as risk-free, or promise an outcome? The GMC guidance is explicit that you must not claim interventions are risk-free.
• Is there a time-limited offer attached to a surgical procedure?
• Are reviews published that you could not evidence if asked?

Source: MHRA, guidance on advertising medicines; GMC, guidance on cosmetic interventions, read 11 September 2026.

Is the structured data honest?

Does every page carry structured data that identifies the practice, the practitioner and the treatment? And is there no review or rating markup on the site that the practice itself controls? Google’s structured data guidelines do not allow an organisation to mark up reviews of itself.

Source: Google, structured data guidelines for review snippets, read 11 September 2026.

Does the site handle privacy the way it says it does?

Is consent asked for before any analytics or marketing cookie is set, rather than after? Does the privacy policy describe what the site actually does with an enquiry and which tools it uses, rather than describing some other site? The Information Commissioner’s Office publishes guidance on cookies and on privacy information.

Source: Information Commissioner’s Office, guidance on cookies and similar technologies, read 11 September 2026.

Does the site meet its legal and accessibility basics?

If the practice trades as a limited company, does the site state the registered company name, registration number, place of registration and registered office address, as company law requires? Can the site be read with text enlarged, navigated with a keyboard and used with a screen reader? Do images carry alt text and does every form field have a label? These are basics rather than a full audit, and a site that fails them is failing the patients who most need to reach you.

What is the full list?

• Named practitioner profile with registration details
• Treatment pages that describe risk and recovery honestly
• A published fees position
• Insurer recognition stated
• An enquiry route that reaches the inbox or the practice software
• A route for GP and consultant referrals
• No prescription-only medicine named to promote it
• No risk-free or guaranteed-outcome claims
• No review markup the practice controls
• Structured data on every page
• Cookie consent before analytics
• A privacy policy that matches what the site does
• Registered company details where the law requires them
• Accessibility basics

This is general information rather than regulatory advice. Compliance with the rules each item points to rests with you as the regulated party.