Social Media for Doctors: What to Post and What Not To

A clinic account can do one of three jobs well and all three badly.

It can build familiarity, so that when someone needs a specialist your name is the one they already recognise. It can answer the questions patients have before they book, which shortens the consultation and filters who arrives. Or it can be a direct acquisition channel, which is the hardest of the three and the one most clinics assume they are doing.

Familiarity is usually the honest goal for a practice, and it is undervalued because it does not produce attributable bookings. Someone who followed you for eight months and then called is recorded as a phone call from nowhere.

Decide which one you are doing, because the content differs. An account built for familiarity posts the clinician thinking out loud. An account built to answer pre-booking questions posts the six things every patient asks. An acquisition account needs offers and a booking path, and it needs to survive the advertising rules that come with it.

This is the most requested post type in dentistry and aesthetics, and the one that most often gets published without the paperwork that makes it lawful.

NOM-004-SSA3-2012 is explicit: for purposes of medical literature, teaching, research or photographs that allow identifying the patient, publishing or disclosing personal data from the clinical file requires the patient's written authorisation, and requires adopting the necessary measures so the patient cannot be identified.

Two obligations, not one. Written authorisation, and de-identification. Verbal consent in the chair does not satisfy the first. A cropped mouth is often not enough for the second, because a distinctive dental arrangement, a visible tattoo, a background detail in your own clinic, or the post's date next to a patient's own social activity can all identify someone in a small city.

Practical version: a written, signed authorisation that names the specific use, including social media and website, kept in the file. Photographs framed so that identification is not possible. No names, no dates of treatment, and no replies in the comments confirming who it was.

Also relevant: article 18 of the health advertising regulation withholds authorisation from advertising that offers treatments whose efficacy has not been scientifically proven. A before-and-after presented as a typical outcome, when it is the best case you have, drifts toward exactly that.

If the authorisation is not in the file, do not post it. The single image is not worth the complaint.

Post anything clinical and within an hour someone will describe their symptoms and ask what they should do. The instinct to help is the right instinct and the wrong channel.

Answering with anything resembling a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation, without an examination or a history, exposes the clinician and gives the person advice built on a paragraph. It also happens in public, where the next reader takes it as general guidance.

The reply that works is short and consistent: this needs to be examined properly, here is how to book, and if it is urgent here is what to do now. Say it the same way every time so the account has a visible policy rather than a mood.

Move the specifics to a private channel, and even there the same limit applies. A written recommendation in a direct message is still a recommendation without an examination. The constraints are the same ones covered in WhatsApp para clínicas.

Do not confirm in public that someone is your patient. A reply thanking a commenter for their visit last week has disclosed care, and the duty of confidentiality does not evaporate because they commented first.

Article 19 of the health advertising regulation requires that professional advertising state the institution that issued the title, diploma or certificate and, where applicable, the professional licence number, in whatever advertising medium is used.

A social profile promoting a practice is an advertising medium. The bio is where this goes: full name, specialty, issuing institution, licence number.

It is also the fastest credibility signal available on a platform full of people who are not qualified. In categories like aesthetics and nutrition, where unlicensed accounts are abundant, publishing the credential distinguishes you at zero cost.

Add it to the profile once and it applies to everything you post, which is easier than trying to fit it into individual captions.

Consistency beats production value in this category, and most clinics fail on consistency because they planned for production value.

The questions you answer daily in consultation. Write down the six most frequent for a week and you have six weeks of posts, in the patient's own words, on topics with demonstrated demand.

The process, demystified. What actually happens during the procedure, what the recovery is like, what the patient will feel. Anxiety about the unknown is a real reason people postpone treatment.

The clinic itself: the room, the equipment, the team. It is the cheapest content you have and it does more than stock photography, because the patient is trying to picture where they will be.

Corrections of common misinformation, stated carefully and without contempt for the person who believed it.

What to skip: generic health-day graphics that any account could post, motivational quotes over stock images, and anything promising a result. The first two are invisible and the third is the one that draws regulatory attention.

Paid social adds a fourth rulebook, and it interacts badly with health.

Ad platforms restrict targeting based on health conditions, in the same spirit as the search-side restrictions we cover in Google Ads para médicos. Building an audience around a condition is generally not available, and copy that addresses the reader's health status in the second person tends to be rejected.

The workable framing is to advertise the practice and the service rather than the reader's condition, which is also the framing least likely to make a stranger feel identified.

The Mexican rules do not stop applying because the medium is paid social. Article 19 still applies to the credential. Article 18 still applies to efficacy claims. And article 78 places a duty on media outlets to ensure the advertising they carry has the corresponding permiso or filed aviso, with the advertiser required to give the outlet a copy, which is a duty platforms do not enforce and clinics therefore forget exists.

This is a summary of the regulation, not legal advice. Confirm your specific situation with COFEPRISCOFEPRISMexico’s Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks. Among other things, it regulates the advertising of health products and services; some ads require its approval.Read more → or a specialised lawyer before running a campaign.