Marketing your Practice and NHS Brand Guidelines

Providing and publishing information about your services - GMC Good Medical Practice

If you publish information about your medical services, you must make sure the information is factual and verifiable.

You must not make unjustifiable claims about the quality or outcomes of your services in any information you provide to patients. It must not offer guarantees of cures, nor exploit patients’ vulnerability or lack of medical knowledge.

You must not put pressure on people to use a service, for example by arousing ill-founded fears for their future health.

Please see attached presentation for information entitled "Marketing successes shared: why your practice will benefit" by Dr Michael Taylor, GP, Heywood, Lancashire Family Doctor Association.

NHS Brand Guidelines for GPs

The Department of Health produced this guidance around signage and the use of the NHS logo and Practices considering their internal and external signage, their letter heads and their communication with patients may find them helpful.

In the Department's opinion the NHS Identity is based on a set of values that includes, improve health, provide the best care, act professionally, work efficiency, treat everybody equally, and increasingly provide choice and be responsive. They feel that including the NHS Identity into your surgery demonstrates your support for these values to your patients.

The guidance sets out the requirements that have to be followed to use the NHS logo in signs and on stationary. It also includes the contact details of a variety of approved suppliers and some suggestions about making signage and other communication with patients clear and easy to understand.

http://www.nhsidentity.nhs.uk/all-guidelines/guidelines/general-practitioner/introduction