Compliance-aware healthcare marketing, without rebuilding the evidence behind every claim.

A working standard for honest healthcare marketing

Compliance is easier when it is built into how pages are written, not checked at the end. These are the rules we hold every page to, starting with our founder’s own practice.

Every claim needs a source you could show

Before a sentence is published, someone should be able to point to where it comes from: a fee schedule, a license record, an insurance contract, a published guideline. If nobody can, the sentence comes out.

Family Hope Healthcare’s pages are written to that rule: no invented statistics, reviews, guarantees or clinician details, and only facts the practice can back up.

Reviewer credits must be real

Pages that say a clinician reviewed them carry weight with readers and search engines. On Family Hope’s site that credit appears only on pages a clinician has actually confirmed, and an automated check blocks it anywhere else.

A credit that was never earned is a claim like any other, and a costly one if questioned.

Reviews and testimonials follow federal rules

The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials prohibits fake reviews, buying reviews and suppressing negative ones. Professional ethics codes add their own limits on asking clients for testimonials.

Ask for feedback fairly, never only from satisfied patients, and never in exchange for anything.

Be careful what your website tracks

Analytics and advertising tags can collect more than intended, especially on forms and appointment pages. The Department of Health and Human Services has issued guidance on online tracking technologies, parts of which have been challenged in court, so review the current position with your privacy lead.

When in doubt, keep tracking off pages where people share health information.

Advertising has its own rulebook

Google restricts targeting ads by health conditions and requires certification for some categories, including addiction treatment. Ad wording must avoid promises of outcomes and must describe services, not medications people should expect.

Write the ad to the same standard as the page it leads to.

Safety information is part of compliance

Mental health pages should tell people what to do in a crisis: call or text 988, or call 911 in an emergency. A practice that is not an emergency service should say so plainly.

It is the right thing to do, and it shows any reviewer that the page puts patients first.

When patient information makes it a HIPAA question

HIPAA defines marketing narrowly but treats it strictly. With limited exceptions, a practice needs a patient’s written authorization before using that patient’s health information for marketing. Telling your own patients about a health service you provide is treated differently from promoting someone else’s, and selling patient lists requires authorization from each person on the list.

In everyday terms: do not upload patient lists to ad platforms, do not build email campaigns from your records system without your privacy lead’s review, and do not turn a patient’s story into marketing without an authorization written for that purpose. A treatment consent form is not a marketing authorization.

Answering reviews without confirming anyone is a patient

A negative review tempts a reply that tells your side. The HHS Office for Civil Rights has settled with a dental practice over replies to online reviews that disclosed patient information, and it describes that kind of disclosure as illegal under HIPAA.

A safe reply thanks the person, says the practice takes feedback seriously and invites them to call the office, without confirming they were ever seen. Write a short set of approved replies in advance, decide who may post them, and wait a day before answering anything that stings.

Health claims need evidence that matches

The FTC judges an ad by the overall impression it leaves, not by what the advertiser meant. Photos, headlines and even a practice name can imply a result. Its health guidance expects health benefit claims to rest on competent and reliable scientific evidence, and holds testimonials to the same standard as a direct claim.

For a practice page, that means describing what you do rather than how a patient will feel afterward. “Our therapists offer cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety” can be checked. “Feel like yourself again in six weeks” is a promise. The FTC also says fine print does not fix a misleading headline.

Email and text campaigns have their own rules

A newsletter to past patients or referral partners counts as commercial email under the CAN-SPAM Act, which makes no exception for business-to-business messages. It needs an accurate sender, an honest subject line, your postal address and a working way to unsubscribe, honored within ten business days.

Before emailing patients at all, confirm with your privacy lead whether the list and the message are allowed under HIPAA. Text messages carry further federal and state consent rules, so check them with counsel before starting. Keep health details out of subject lines and previews, which other people may see.

Accessibility is part of being reachable

If your practice receives federal financial assistance from HHS, the Section 504 rule sets WCAG 2.1 AA as the accessibility standard for your website and apps. In May 2026 HHS extended the compliance dates to May 11, 2027 for recipients with 15 or more employees, and May 10, 2028 for smaller ones.

Whether the rule applies to your practice is a question for counsel, but the work is worth doing either way. Readable text, captions on video, labeled form fields and buttons that work by keyboard help every visitor, including someone reading on a phone at a hard moment.

How LunahUP builds this in

Drafts are prepared from approved facts, unsupported statements are flagged before review, and your responsible team approves the final wording. If a claim cannot be supported, it is removed rather than softened.

A dated history of approved edits means any later question about your site’s wording has a clear answer.