Running Google Ads for a hospital without understanding NMC advertising guidelines is a licence risk. Here is exactly what you can and cannot do.
Medical advertising in India is regulated by the National Medical Commission (NMC), formerly MCI. Violating these guidelines can result in warnings, penalties, and in serious cases, licence suspension. Yet most generic digital agencies running hospital campaigns have never read a single NMC guideline.
What the NMC Prohibits in Medical Advertising
You cannot: use superlatives like 'best doctor', 'guaranteed cure', 'most experienced'; make claims of exclusivity; publish patient testimonials or before/after images for clinical results; advertise specific success rates or cure percentages; use the words 'specialist' or 'expert' without registered qualification proof.
What You CAN Do (The Safe Zone)
Safe advertising includes: factual information about services offered, facility details and accreditations (NABH, JCI), doctor qualifications and registration numbers, appointment availability, general health awareness content, pricing for diagnostic tests, and location-based availability messages.
The Compliance Checklist We Use
Before any ad goes live at Emerge Digital, we run a 12-point compliance check: no banned superlatives, qualified claims only, sourced statistics, no patient identifiers, no cure guarantees, proper disclaimer for diagnostic claims, correct doctor title usage, and NABH/accreditation status verified.