How Doctors and Clinics in Mumbai Can Get Found Online Under NMC’s New Advertising Rules

Picture a typical dental clinic in Vashi in September 2026. Its Instagram grid is a wall of smile makeovers, each one a before-and-after pair. The website has a testimonial slider and a banner that says “Navi Mumbai’s most trusted dentist”. There is a Diwali offer on teeth whitening, and the clinic pays a listing app for a “featured” spot. None of this was unusual. A lot of clinics I have spoken to ran some version of it.

On 6 October 2026 the National Medical Commission’s Ethics and Medical Registration Board issued a public notice with “Guidelines on Ethical Advertising and Public Communication by Hospitals/Medical Institutions and Registered Medical Practitioners”, in force with immediate effect. Read against that document, almost every item in that clinic’s playbook is now a problem. So the question this article answers is practical: if the usual tactics are banned, how does a doctor or clinic in Mumbai still get found and chosen by patients?

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. What follows is my reading of the notice as a marketer who has to build websites and campaigns that comply with it. I quote the clauses so you can check them yourself, and I flag the places where the text is unclear.

1. What the 6 October 2026 guidelines actually say

The notice (No. R-13014/01/2024-Ethics) was framed, it says, in view of Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1160/2023 in the Supreme Court and the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002. Its stated aims include preventing the commercialisation of healthcare and keeping healthcare communication “informational, ethical and evidence-based”. I could not find a copy on nmc.org.in at the time of writing, so the link here is to the signed notice as published by Medical Dialogues on 7 October.

Two definitions matter more than anything else. “Advertisement” covers any communication that directly or indirectly promotes a doctor’s or hospital’s services, reputation, skills or facilities, and the notice says digital, social media, sponsored, influencer-led, search-engine and AI-generated content counts when it is promotional (para 3.2). “Medium of advertisement” explicitly includes websites and blogs, WhatsApp and Telegram, podcasts, influencer marketing and online healthcare platforms (para 3.5). There is no channel that sits outside the rules.

Source: NMC Ethics & Medical Registration Board, public notice dated 06/10/2026. Summarised by Infoways; read the clauses for exact wording.

The penalties are graded and are applied by the State Medical Council against the individual doctor. For hospitals, the notice says action follows the applicable Clinical Establishments Act or state law, and a doctor who personally approved the content can still be examined separately (para 11.5).

Source: NMC guidelines, para 10.1. A show-cause notice comes first (para 10.2), with appeal to the EMRB within 60 days (para 11.1).

2. Make your website the factual reference patients can trust

The most useful sentence in the whole notice, for a clinic owner, is in para 9.1. It says a hospital website with a directory of its doctors, listing names, recognised qualifications, specialities, registration details and availability, “serves a patient-information function” and is “materially distinct from a paid or promotional advertisement”. In other words, a clear, factual website is the safest and strongest asset you can have.

I would build it around the questions a patient actually has before booking, answered plainly.

• Who will I see? Each doctor’s name, recognised qualifications, speciality, and State or National Medical Register number. The notice asks doctors and clinics to disclose registration details on electronic media posts (Explanations III and IV under para 3.2), so put them on the site too.
• What do you treat and with what? Departments, services and equipment, described factually. Para 3.2 (Explanation II) allows information about equipment and diagnostic facilities as long as there are no claims of superiority, guaranteed accuracy or guaranteed outcomes.
• When and where? OPD timings by doctor, address, parking, wheelchair access, nearest station.
• What will it cost? The notice allows a “public declaration of charge” (para 8.2(ii)) and says any lawful disclosure of charges or packages must be factual and not misleading (para 8.1(x)). Posting consultation fees is fine. A crossed-out price with “50% off this week” is not.
• How do I book? A booking form, click-to-call and WhatsApp. Making it easy to reach you is a service, not solicitation.

What to take off the site now

Testimonial sliders, video reviews, “happy patients” galleries, before-and-after sections, success-rate counters (“10,000 successful surgeries”), “best” or “most trusted” in headings, and any offer or coupon banner. Para 8.1(iii) specifically bans advertising success rates or the number of patients treated with exaggerated or unverifiable claims.

Doctor photographs are less clear. Para 9.2 says an RMP’s photograph is not permitted where it “constitutes self-advertisement, solicitation or promotional publicity”, and points to the 2002 Regulations on letterheads and signboards. A plain headshot in a factual directory looks to me like patient information. A doctor posing in a hero banner beside “Mumbai’s top surgeon” does not. If in doubt, ask your State Medical Council (for Mumbai, the Maharashtra Medical Council) before you publish.

See also: how we approach clinic and hospital sites on our healthcare industry page.

3. Google Business Profile: factual, complete, and careful with reviews

When someone in Andheri searches “paediatrician near me”, the map results usually appear before any website. Google says local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence, and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. A Business Profile is mostly factual information, which is exactly what the NMC guidelines allow, so this is the channel that changes least.

Google has specific rules for individual practitioners. A doctor who is public-facing and can be contacted at the verified location during stated hours can have a profile, but should not create several profiles for different specialisations. Where several doctors work at one clinic, the clinic gets its own profile separate from the practitioners, and a practitioner’s profile title should contain only the practitioner’s name. Google also says adding unnecessary information to the business name is not permitted and can lead to suspension, so “Dr Shah Best Skin Clinic Laser Vashi” fails on two counts.

The review question nobody has answered yet

Reviews clearly matter to patients choosing a provider. The best recent data I could verify is US data, not Indian: in BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 97% said they read online reviews for local businesses and 74% look for reviews from the last three months.

The NMC notice is strict here. Explanation V under para 3.2 bans soliciting, buying or manipulating fake, paid or misleading reviews, which is expected. But it then says: “An RMP shall not request or share patient testimonials, recommendations, endorsements or reviews for professional promotion on social media.” The guidelines define social media as internet-based sites and apps where users create, share and join online communities (para 3.6). Whether a Google Maps review counts is not spelled out.

My opinion, until the NMC clarifies (para 12 lets it issue clarifications): stop sending “please review us” messages to patients, stop resharing reviews on Instagram or your website, and never offer anything for a review. Google’s own Maps content policy already bans incentives, asking only happy customers and staff review quotas, so you were never allowed those. Patients will still leave reviews on their own, and you can still reply.

When you reply, protect privacy. Para 6.1 restricts the use of patient information, and para 7.4 says no identifiable patient data may be shared publicly. A reply like “Thank you, we are glad your knee surgery went well” confirms that a named person is your patient and what they were treated for. “Thank you for your feedback. Please call the front desk if we can help further” does not.

See also: the full setup is in our Google Business Profile guide and local SEO for Navi Mumbai.

4. Health education: allowed, as long as it does not sell

This is where many doctors on Instagram and YouTube will need to adjust, not stop. Para 5.1 allows doctors to take part in health awareness programmes, academic discussions and educational content “provided that such activities do not promote personal practice, do not solicit patients and are not monetized through promotional marketing”. Para 8.2(iii) allows talks on TV, radio and electronic media in the doctor’s own name and designation, “without promoting their employer organization”.

So a short video explaining when a child’s fever needs a doctor is fine. The same video ending with “Book with me at our Kharghar clinic, 20% off first consultation” is an advertisement, and a non-compliant one. Para 8.1(i) also bans content intended to create unnecessary demand for procedures, promote unnecessary diagnostics or use fear-based marketing, which rules out the “Is this headache actually a tumour?” style of hook.

Source: Infoways reading of the NMC guidelines of 6 October 2026. Not legal advice; ambiguous cases should go to your State Medical Council.

On AI, the rule is narrower than some headlines suggest. Para 7.2 bans AI-generated promotional campaigns for commercial interest, and says any AI content that is otherwise compliant must carry a mark stating that it was made by AI. Using AI to help draft a factual FAQ is not banned, but if the finished content is AI-generated, label it.

5. Paid ads: possible for clinics, very limited for individual doctors

The guidelines draw a line between hospitals or medical institutions and individual practitioners. Para 8.3 lets hospitals disseminate “factual, objective and verifiable information” about their name, location, departments, facilities, emergency services, accreditation and charges, as long as there is no solicitation, inducement, superiority claim or promotional portrayal of an individual doctor. Para 9.1 says much the same for clinical establishments.

For an individual doctor, para 8.1(ii) says an RMP shall not solicit patients directly or indirectly, promote services through self-promotion, or “engage any third party for marketing medical services”. Read plainly, that leaves very little room for a solo practitioner to run promotional ads under their own name. My advice to solo doctors is to put the effort into the website and Business Profile rather than ads until the NMC says otherwise.

Where a clinic or hospital does advertise, Google has its own layer of rules. The Healthcare and medicines policy restricts prescription drug terms and does not allow promotion of speculative or experimental treatments. Google’s personalised advertising policy lists Health as a sensitive interest category, and advertisers in sensitive categories cannot use advertiser-curated audiences, which limits remarketing to people who visited your treatment pages.

On cost, I could not find a reliable Indian benchmark for medical ads. The best documented dataset is American, so treat it only as a sense of how healthcare compares with other industries.

Source: WordStream / LocaliQ Google Ads Benchmarks 2026; 13,474 US search campaigns. US data, not India-specific.

Those conversion rates were earned in a market where offers and testimonials were common on landing pages. A compliant Indian clinic page, with no offer and no patient stories, will have to convert on clarity: fees shown, doctors’ credentials visible, timings and booking in one tap. I expect that to be enough for patients who already need care, and that is the only patient you should be advertising to anyway.

See also: how campaigns, budgets and tracking work in how to advertise on Google.

6. Agencies, listing platforms and pay-per-patient deals

This part affects people like me directly, so I will be blunt. Para 4.4 says publishing through an agency, influencer or platform does not “absolve an RMP or medical institution from responsibility for content which it has authorized, commissioned, sponsored, adopted or knowingly permitted.” If your agency posts a testimonial reel, it is your registration on the line, not theirs.

Para 8.1(viii) says agencies, influencers and platforms must not be engaged in a way where payment is “linked to the procurement or referral of individual patients”. Para 8.1(vii) bans referral fees and lead-generation fees connected with procuring patients. That rules out the “pay us per booked appointment” model that some healthcare marketing firms sell. Para 8.1(xi) also bans using a third party to do indirectly what you cannot do directly.

For listing and booking apps, para 9.4 says platforms hosting doctors must comply with the advertising norms and prohibit paid ranking of doctors. If you pay any platform for “sponsored”, “featured” or “priority” placement, ask the platform in writing how that arrangement fits para 9.4 before you renew.

7. Patient data, WhatsApp and reminders

Para 7.6 says advertising that involves personal data must comply with the IT Act, 2000 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its 2025 Rules. The government’s explainer on the DPDP Rules says the Rules were notified on 14 November 2025 with phased compliance over 18 months, and that consent notices must be clear and separate. Health information is about as sensitive as personal data gets, so build this in now rather than in 2027.

In practice that means three things for a clinic. Keep appointment reminders, reports-ready messages and follow-up instructions, which are part of care, separate from anything promotional. Do not upload patient phone lists to ad platforms or bulk WhatsApp tools. And if you feed patient information into an AI tool, para 7.2(d) says it must meet privacy, confidentiality and data-protection requirements.

See also: setup and costs of the WhatsApp Business Platform in our WhatsApp marketing guide.

Where this advice breaks down

• The guidelines are three weeks old. Para 12 lets the NMC issue clarifications, advisories and SOPs. Some of my readings, especially on Google reviews and doctor photos, may turn out stricter or looser than the NMC intends.
• Hospitals answer to more than one rulebook. Para 4.3 says that for hospitals the applicable Clinical Establishments Act or state law overrides the guidelines where they conflict. Check which law applies to your establishment.
• Verifiable rankings are not banned. Para 8.1(ix) allows superiority claims and awards that are objectively verifiable, with the methodology, date and awarding body disclosed. That is a narrow door, not a loophole; most “best clinic” awards I have seen would not pass it.
• The underlying case is still in the Supreme Court. The notice cites Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1160/2023. Further directions could change the picture.
• Other systems and laws apply too. The notice aims at parity across systems of medicine, and other laws on medical advertising still apply on top of it (para 2.2). This article does not cover them.
• This is a marketer’s reading. For a specific campaign or a dispute, speak to a healthcare lawyer or your State Medical Council.

A checklist for this month

The Vashi clinic from the opening does not need its before-and-after grid to get patients. It needs a website and a map listing that tell a worried parent, in plain facts, who the doctor is, what it costs, when they are open and how to book.