The Medical Board of California publishes a short document called The Bottom Line: The Business of Medicine — Medical Spas. It is a few pages, it is written for owners rather than lawyers, and it is the single most useful thing a California med spa operator can read.
We are going to stay in our lane here and talk about what it means for the advertising.
The two rules underneath everything
Medical acts require medical authority. Injectables, most laser work and prescription therapies are the practice of medicine. Performing them requires a physician, or a licensed professional acting within their scope under proper delegation and supervision.
The corporation cannot practice. B&P § 2400 means the entity cannot hold clinical authority. We covered the structural consequences in California med spa ownership.
The supervising physician carries real exposure for what happens under their supervision, which is the fact that makes advertising a shared problem rather than a marketing department problem.
Your supervising physician is personally exposed by claims they have never read. Most have never been shown the ads running under their supervision.
Claims that outrun the supervision
"Doctor-performed" when a nurse injects. Different from doctor-supervised, and patients hear the difference even when copywriters do not.
A good-faith exam implied away. Advertising that suggests someone can book and be treated on the same visit, with no clinical assessment, describes a workflow that would be a problem if it were true.
Treatment promises. "Guaranteed results," "permanent," "no downtime" — each is a clinical claim. B&P § 651 makes it unlawful to disseminate claims likely to create false or unjustified expectations of favorable results, and a misdemeanor at that.
Prices with no context. § 651 also governs price advertising: the price for each service must be clearly identifiable, and bait pricing is named specifically. "Botox from $9/unit" without the minimum is the standard example.
What accurate copy looks like
- "Treatments performed by our nurse injectors, supervised by Dr [Name]"
- "Every patient is assessed before treatment"
- "Results vary. We'll tell you at the consultation what's realistic for you"
- "$12 per unit, 20-unit minimum for most first treatments"
None of these is weaker than the vague version. Specificity is the strongest thing an aesthetic ad can contain, because everybody else is vague.
If you have never had your ads read against your supervision arrangement, it is a short job, and it is the sort of thing that only ever looks urgent in retrospect.