Double Check Your Advertising

All marketing, including word-of-mouth, must be truthful and not misleading. Back claims with peer-reviewed research to stay compliant with the Illinois Medical Practice Act and maintain public trust.

Links from today’s video:

Legal Advertising (article)
Informed Consent (article)

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Transcript:

Today, the ICS wants to remind our doctors across Illinois of some key components within the medical practice act that you want to keep front of mind when you are marketing, when you’re advertising, when you’re making claims to your patients, all of those really, are truly important, and you want to make sure that the claims that you make about the services that you’re providing are completely true, are completely accurate. In fact, the Medical Practice Act puts it as you want to make sure that they’re not misleading, that they’re not exaggerated, and they are not making false claims to the patients or to the public.

Now this includes all kinds of different marketing, and sometimes we get focused in on marketing. We think, well, just our website. It does include your website that is super important. In fact, we’ve seen recent disciplinary action taken against providers for exactly that, for overstating, for exaggerated claims within their marketing on their websites. But it also includes social media and one other area that is super important, and that is your word of mouth. What you say to the patients matters as well. And so you want to make sure that everything you say is on point. You want to make sure that you have a backup for it. One of the things that I like to recommend is to keep a file folder. You want to keep one electronically, and also keep one that’s printed right, that you keep in a file cabinet or file box in your office, but an electronic one is also great. You want to keep copies of research that backs up the claims that you’re making to the patients and to the public via your website, social media, print, media, flyers, or whatever else the case may be; just keep copies of the research that backs up your claims and assertions. Make sure it’s not just any research. Make sure it’s peer-reviewed research. Otherwise, you can just print off anything off of the internet. And in fact, you could go make things up and assert that, too. So you want to make sure that it’s peer-reviewed publications that put out these studies that will help ultimately defend you in the cases when some things may come up.

You want to make sure that this happens because there are fines and penalties that are associated with that. And we also want to make sure that we protect the profession as a whole. We want patients to trust us. We have done a lot over the course of our 100 years, 100 plus years, to ensure that the public can trust us, and we want to continue with that ensure that they trust us, and the things that we say on our website and the things that our doctors say to their patients inside the practices are understood to be factual and so misleading, is always that keyword. In fact, when I lecture on advertising and marketing and the legal side of advertising and marketing, one of the keywords that I hone in on in our discussions is the word misleading. You want to make sure that nothing that you say is misleading, even though there are times that you could say something that is true, but it may be misleading to the person you’re talking to, and you don’t want that to happen, not just for the disciplinary side of things, but also for the for the distrust that may come as a result of that, and so we continue to gain the trust of the public and gain the trust of our patients through clear communication that is backed up with the evidence, and make sure that you nail that down.

So one of the things that I like to say is really this: when it comes to your marketing and advertising, when in doubt, leave it out. If you’re not completely certain, remove it from your website, or don’t include it in your marketing materials, or don’t say it to your patients, make sure you have it down. Next is this, if you’ve got a cutting edge service or treatment that you’re utilizing in your practice, you want to gather as much evidence and efficacy cleared indications of that as you possibly can, and then you want to make sure that your informed consent is nailed down and you have that conversation with the patient, you also have a written informed consent in those cases, most especially. But you want to make sure you get that nailed down. And by the way, we do have some materials online, and you can jump out to ilchiro.org and jump to our informed consent to be able to get access to that as well. But the biggest thing in all of this is make sure that you have backed up research, peer-reviewed studies for the assertions and claims that you make in all of your marketing, including your word of mouth. We’ll catch you next week.