What a pharmacy or clinic can and can't say online in New Brunswick

If you own a pharmacy in Moncton or a physiotherapy clinic in Saint John, you have probably had the same conversation with whoever runs your social media. They want to post a happy patient story. You have a feeling you are not supposed to. Nobody is quite sure where the line is, so the post either goes up with fingers crossed or nothing goes up at all.

Both outcomes are bad. The first can land you in front of a complaints committee. The second leaves your website saying nothing useful while the clinic across the river picks up the walk-ins. This article lays out the general shape of the constraints and what you can say with confidence. It is not legal advice, the specifics vary by profession, and anything that matters should be confirmed with your college.

Three sets of rules, not one

Most owners think about this as a single question: what does my college allow? It is actually three overlapping questions.

• Your regulator. Pharmacists, physicians, nurse practitioners, physiotherapists, dentists, optometrists and most other health professions in New Brunswick are regulated by a provincial college or association. Each one publishes advertising or marketing standards. They tend to share a family resemblance: be accurate, do not mislead, do not create unreasonable expectations, do not compare yourself to colleagues, and be careful with testimonials. The details differ, and the details are what matter.
• Privacy law. Patient information is protected under federal and provincial privacy rules. That covers the obvious (never post a patient’s name or face without consent) and the less obvious (a thank-you card photographed with a chart visible in the background, or a reply to a Google review that confirms someone was a patient).
• Platform policy. Google and Meta have their own rules on health content, and they enforce them with software, not judgement. Ads that mention conditions, imply the platform knows something about the viewer’s health, or make treatment claims get disapproved. Those rules change without notice.

You need to clear all three. Clearing one and assuming the others follow is how most problems start.

What gets clinics in trouble

In our experience the same handful of things come up again and again.

• Patient testimonials. A quote, a video, a screenshot of a review, a “patient of the month.” Many regulators restrict or prohibit testimonials for health professionals because one patient’s outcome is not evidence that yours will match. Some permit them with conditions. Find out which applies to you before you post one.
• Before and after images. Common in cosmetic, dental and dermatology marketing. Often restricted, often requiring explicit consent and disclaimers, sometimes banned outright.
• Superlatives. “Best physio in Fredericton.” “The most experienced team in the Maritimes.” Unverifiable, comparative, and a common trigger for complaints from other practitioners.
• Implied guarantees. “Pain-free in two visits.” “Get your life back.” Any phrasing that promises a result or sets an expectation you cannot be sure of.
• Naming conditions in ads. This one is mostly a platform problem. An ad that says “Struggling with anxiety?” implies the platform targeted the viewer based on a health condition, and Meta in particular will reject it.
• Replying to reviews with patient details. Even a kind reply (“Glad your knee is doing better, Jean!”) confirms a care relationship in public.

Notice that none of these are things a clinic does maliciously. They are things a well-meaning person does because every other business on the internet does them.

Why testimonials are the big one

Testimonials deserve their own section because they are the most tempting and the most commonly restricted.

The logic from the regulator’s side is simple. A testimonial is persuasive precisely because it is personal and emotional, and health decisions should not be made on that basis. A patient who had a great result at your clinic is a sample of one. A patient who had a poor result will not be in your video. The regulator treats this as inherently misleading, regardless of whether every word is true.

That creates a practical gap: Google reviews exist whether you want them or not, and patients read them. The general approach that keeps most clinics safe is to not solicit, repost, feature or reply to reviews in ways that turn them into marketing, while still monitoring them and responding to genuine service issues in neutral language. Your college may have a view on soliciting reviews at all. Ask.

The question to ask before any post is not “is this true?” It is “could a reasonable person read this as a promise?”

What works instead

Here is the part most owners miss: the content that stays inside the lines is also the content that patients actually want.

Nobody books a physiotherapist because of a superlative. They book because they found out, quickly, that the clinic treats their kind of problem, takes their insurance, has an opening this week, and is on their side of town. Plain, specific, factual content answers those questions. It is also, by its nature, compliant.

• Plain descriptions of services. What you offer, in the language a patient would use. “Minor ailment assessments” means nothing to most people. “Pharmacist assessments for a defined list of common conditions, no doctor’s visit needed, list below” is useful, as long as the list matches what your pharmacists are actually authorized to do.
• Who delivers care. Names, credentials, registration with the relevant college, languages spoken, years in practice stated as a fact. This is the single most trust-building thing on a clinic website and it is almost never restricted.
• What is excluded. Saying what you do not do (no emergency care, no controlled substance prescribing, no patients under a certain age) sounds counterintuitive. In practice it filters out the wrong enquiries and signals honesty.
• How to book, and what happens next. The booking link, the phone number, the hours, what to bring, how long a first visit takes, whether direct billing is available.
• General health education. A plain explainer on what a pharmacist can assess in New Brunswick, or what to expect at a first physio appointment, framed as information rather than a pitch. Keep it general and avoid anything that reads as a diagnosis.

Bilingual parity in New Brunswick

New Brunswick is officially bilingual, and a meaningful share of your patients will read your site in French. If your English page lists six services and your French page lists three with a note that says “contactez-nous,” you have a trust problem and possibly a compliance problem at the same time. Whatever you publish, publish it in both languages with the same substance, the same disclaimers and the same booking path. If you cannot maintain both, publish less and keep it equal.

Platform rules you do not control

A quick word on Google and Meta, because owners often blame their agency when an ad gets rejected.

Both platforms restrict health advertising, and some categories require certification before you can run ads at all (online pharmacy is a common one). Their systems scan copy, images and landing pages. The safest pattern is to advertise the service and the location, not the condition or the outcome: “Pharmacist assessments, walk in or book online, Dieppe” rather than “Suffering from a UTI?” Expect some disapprovals anyway, and expect the rules to shift. Build your campaigns so a rejected ad is an inconvenience, not a crisis.

What to do first

Before you write another post or brief anyone on a new website, do these three things in order.

1. Pull your college’s current advertising standard and read it yourself. It is usually short. Note what it says about testimonials, comparatives, and the use of titles.
2. Audit what is already live: website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram. Flag anything that fits the list above. Fix the privacy issues the same day; the rest can wait a week.
3. Write a one-page content rule sheet for your team: what we say, what we never say, who approves, and where the French version lives. Keep it next to the till.

Once that is done, the content side gets a lot easier, because the question is no longer “what are we allowed to say” but “what does a patient in Fredericton need to know before they book.” That is a much better question.