New Jersey

The Garden State has grown quite a thicket of medical marketing regulations. New Jersey practitioners are well advised to read through all of New Jersey’s statutes and regulations carefully with their legal counsel. At Etna Interactive, we’re serious about providing medical website designs that help our clients to satisfy their ethical and legal responsibilities.

Sample Best Practices

We’ve developed some sample best practices to help you get started discussing your medical marketing with your legal counsel in more detail. Find out if you need to take steps to avoid the following:

• Including in your advertising any statement, claim or format including, but not limited to, a graphic representation, which is false, fraudulent, misleading or deceptive.
• Making any misrepresentation of a material fact.
• Suppressing, omitting, or concealing any material fact under circumstances when you know or should know that the omission is improper or prohibits a prospective patient from making a full and informed judgment on the basis of the information set forth in the advertisement.
• Making any claim that the service performed or the materials used are superior to that which is ordinarily performed or used in the profession.
• Promoting a professional service which you know or should know is beyond your ability to perform.
• Communicating in a way that appears to intimidate, exert undue pressure or to unduly influence a prospective patient or consumer.
• Providing any information that may personally identify a patient without the patient’s signed written permission obtained in advance.
• Paying for referral of a patient.
• Directly or indirectly obscuring a material fact.
• Guaranteeing results from a procedure.
• Advertising fees without giving a fixed or a stated range of fees for specifically described routine professional services or goods offered.
• Charging for additional services in conjunction with the fee for an advertised service unless the advertisement includes a specific delineation of additional services contemplated in the fee to be charged.
• Advertising discounted services without stating the reduced fee or range of fees and the physician’s usual fee or range of fees for each service for which a reduction is advertised.
• Advertising free services or discounts without including a statement of the specific charges for all associated or reasonably anticipated services which are not included in the offer of free or discounted services.
• Charging for any service rendered during a period of 72 hours from the time the free service was rendered, except for those services specifically excluded in the advertisement offering free services.
• Advertising without retaining for at least three years a copy of any print or electronic advertisement for review by the Board of Medical Examiners.
• Claiming board certification without conspicuously specifying in the advertisement the specific specialty board or certifying entity granting the certification and the national organization recognizing such specialty board or certifying entity.
• Using testimonials without complying with the extensive requirements related to testimonials.
• Making scientific claims that cannot be substantiated.
• Showing patient before and after photos without indicating that results vary and the results shown are not a guarantee.
• Showing models without clearly indicating that the photos are not of actual patients.

Please help us keep these pages up to date. If you or your legal counsel notice an oversight in our comments or a problem with this page, please alert us by email. Also, be sure to read our legal disclaimer.

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