NMC Introduces New Ethical Rules for Healthcare Advertising: Compliance and Enforcement Challenges for Hospitals in India
As hospitals expand and healthcare providers increasingly invest in advertising and digital marketing, ensuring ethical and transparent communication with patients has become more important than ever. Healthcare advertising must balance patients’ need for information with the risk that misleading promotional claims may influence treatment decisions or encourage unnecessary medical interventions. Against this backdrop, the National Medical Commission (“NMC”) issued its Guidelines on Ethical Advertising and Public Communication by Hospitals/Medical Institutions and Registered Medical Practitioners (“Guidelines”) on October 6, 2026, with immediate effect, introducing a more detailed framework for healthcare advertising across digital and other media.
The Guidelines follow growing concerns over the promotion of healthcare services by hospitals and healthcare-related entities. In 2023, a public interest litigation was filed before the Supreme Court seeking regulation of hospital advertisements and raising concerns about unrestricted promotional practices and their potential to mislead patients. The Supreme Court subsequently issued notice in the matter, following which the NMC constituted a seven-member committee to examine the issue.
The committee recommended extending the ethical advertising restrictions applicable to Registered Medical Practitioners (“RMPs”) to hospitals and medical institutions, taking the view that the concept of “professional ethics in medical profession” under the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 (“Ethics Code”), was not confined to individual medical professionals.
The primary objective of the Guidelines is to prevent misleading claims, improper patient solicitation and the commercialisation of healthcare while preserving access to factual information about medical services. They cover a broad range of communication channels, including websites, social media, blogs, podcasts, influencer marketing, sponsored posts, digital marketing campaigns and AI-generated or AI-assisted promotional content.
The Ethics Code already restricted patient solicitation and self-promotional advertising by RMPs. The new Guidelines establish a more detailed framework and expressly address hospitals, medical institutions and clinical establishments. Their definition of hospitals and medical institutions includes institutions covered under Section 2(c)(i) of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act (“Clinical Establishments Act”), encompassing hospitals, maternity homes, nursing homes, dispensaries, clinics, sanatoriums and other institutions providing facilities or services for the diagnosis, treatment or care of illness, injury, deformity, abnormality or pregnancy under a recognised system of medicine.
Although the NMC Act, 2019 empowers the NMC to regulate medical professionals and professional ethics, it also refers to the regulation of medical institutions. The extent of the NMC’s authority to directly enforce advertising-related obligations against hospital entities remains a key legal question.
The NMC had previously addressed hospital advertising through its Registered Medical Practitioner (Professional Conduct) Regulations, 2023, but those regulations were kept in abeyance following objections from the Indian Medical Association. The present Guidelines represent a further attempt to establish express standards for healthcare advertising by hospitals and other clinical establishments.
The Guidelines permit hospitals and medical institutions to publish factual, objective and verifiable information concerning their name, location, contact details, departments, facilities, equipment, services, emergency services, accreditation status and applicable fees. While RMPs may participate in public-health awareness and educational activities, subject to applicable professional-conduct requirements, hospital communications must not solicit patients, induce unnecessary treatment, promote individual RMPs or otherwise engage in prohibited promotional activities.
The Guidelines restrict misleading representations, unsubstantiated superiority claims and guarantees of treatment outcomes. Claims such as “No. 1 Hospital”, “Best Doctor”, “100% Success”, “Guaranteed Cures” and “Miracle Treatment” may violate the Guidelines where they are unverifiable, exaggerated or otherwise impermissible. Discounts, coupons, cashbacks and similar inducements intended to encourage unnecessary consultations, investigations or treatment are also restricted. Paid rankings, manipulated search results, fake reviews and artificial enhancement of online visibility are prohibited, as is the use of patient testimonials and clinical images for prohibited promotional purposes.
The restrictions extend to digital communications, influencer marketing, sponsored posts and AI- generated content. Engaging advertising agencies, influencers, celebrities or digital platforms does not necessarily remove responsibility where a hospital or RMP sponsors, adopts or knowingly permits prohibited content. AI cannot be used to fabricate patient experiences, testimonials, qualifications or clinical outcomes, and labelling content as AI-generated does not make otherwise prohibited promotional material permissible. Patient information and images must also be handled in accordance with applicable consent, confidentiality and data-protection requirements. Public-health education remains permissible, provided it complies with professional-conduct requirements and does not become a vehicle for prohibited self-promotion or institutional advertising.
The Guidelines prescribe corrective and disciplinary measures for violations by RMPs, including warnings, ethics training, censure, monetary penalties, suspension and removal from the medical register, depending on the nature and recurrence of the violation. Such disciplinary action may be taken through the applicable medical regulatory authorities, including the State Medical Councils, in accordance with the relevant framework.
For hospitals and clinical establishments, the position is less clear. The Guidelines provide that enforcement against hospitals and clinical establishments will be undertaken under the Clinical Establishments Act and Rules applicable in their respective States. However, these laws primarily address registration, minimum standards of facilities and services, and the display of applicable rates, and generally do not contain specific provisions governing healthcare advertising or penalties for advertising-related violations. State Governments may therefore need to examine whether their existing frameworks adequately address unethical healthcare advertising and, where necessary, introduce specific provisions and enforcement mechanisms.
In the meantime, hospitals and healthcare businesses should review their websites, social-media accounts, videos, sponsored content and third-party marketing arrangements. Internal approval procedures should be established for public-facing communications, with particular scrutiny of claims concerning clinical outcomes, patient testimonials, discounts, referral arrangements and AI-generated content.
The Guidelines do not require healthcare providers to discontinue all public communication. Rather, they require healthcare providers to distinguish the legitimate dissemination of factual information from misleading or prohibited promotional practices. Their practical impact will depend on how the requirements are interpreted and enforced alongside State clinical-establishment laws and other applicable advertising and consumer-protection legislation.
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