Michigan Medical Board advertising rules — a working guide for marketing teams

The dual-board reality — MDs and DOs in one practice

Many Michigan primary-care and specialty practices employ both allopathic (MD) and osteopathic (DO) physicians. The two boards enforce parallel standards drawn from the same Public Health Code, but each board maintains its own docket, its own position statements and its own investigative history. A practice-wide marketing standard should satisfy both, and every physician's individual advertising should be routed to the correct board's inbox in the event of a complaint.

Two operational implications matter. First, physician bios and services pages should identify each physician's credential correctly ("MD" or "DO") and never blur the two — an ad that describes a DO as an "MD" or vice versa is a factual falsehood and an easy adverse finding. Second, the practice's internal review process should carry a note of which board would be the primary respondent for any given asset, so that any legal work product can be filed accurately.

Testimonials, endorsements and reviews

Patient testimonials are permitted in Michigan when they are authentic, do not create unjustified expectations, and are used with the patient's HIPAA-compliant authorization. Two federal duties then layer on. The FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) require disclosure of any material connection between the endorser and the practice — money, free treatment, an ongoing patient-referrer relationship. HIPAA's marketing authorization rules (45 CFR 164.508) require a signed authorization for the specific use of the specific patient's identity, condition or care in marketing.

The working rule for Michigan is that a testimonial ad has to answer four questions on the page itself. Whose experience is this? Is the described result plausibly typical, or is the "results vary" disclosure carrying the same visual weight as the claim? Is there any material connection between the patient and the practice, and is it disclosed? And do we have a HIPAA authorization signed for this specific use, on file, before the ad went live?

Reviews and the response game

Third-party review responses are treated as an act of the practice. A response confirming that a specific reviewer is or was a patient is a HIPAA disclosure. A response that solicits additional business from the reviewer on a public surface starts to look like targeted marketing. The safe pattern is neutral, de-identified acknowledgment and a request to continue offline via a patient-services channel.

Imagery, before-and-after, and video

Before-and-after photography is permitted when four conditions are met. The images must be of actual patients of the practice. They must be unretouched and shot under comparable lighting, distance and angle. The depicted result must be representative of what an ordinary patient can reasonably expect, or the ad must plainly disclose that the result is not typical. And a signed HIPAA marketing authorization must be on file for the specific use.

Stock imagery is defensible for contextual shots (waiting room, exterior, staff) provided the imagery is not presented in a way that suggests it depicts the practice's own outcomes. Where stock imagery accompanies a services page for a specific procedure, a small "illustrative only" note in a legible size and color is the working control.

Short-form video and Reels

Short-form video complicates disclosure delivery because on-screen text is often cropped or auto-scaled and the platform's default playback speed can outrun a reader. The working rule is that a disclosure must be visible for long enough, at large enough size, to be legible at native playback. Voice-over disclosures are stronger evidence of delivery than on-screen-only. In Michigan, where the standard is ordinary-reader takeaway, a disclosure that a reasonable viewer cannot actually read has not been delivered.

A working Michigan review playbook

The most reliable way to translate the rule set into day-to-day marketing operations is a short, written playbook that a copywriter, an ad-platform operator and an in-house reviewer can follow in the same way every week. What follows is the shape of the playbook we deploy for Michigan-scoped practices.

• Pre-brief. Every campaign brief carries a one-line "claim list" — every specific claim the campaign will make, in plain language. Every claim goes into the brief before creative is written, not after.
• Substantiation pass. For each claim, the brief carries a reference to the substantiation source — a statistic in an underlying study, an internal outcome record, a certification document, a review-count screenshot with the date. If a claim has no source on the day the brief is signed, the claim is cut.
• Rule check. Copy is read against a Michigan checklist covering unprofessional-conduct grounds, testimonial authenticity, board-certification support, guarantees, comparative claims, and imagery representativeness.
• HIPAA gate. A separate check confirms that no PHI-tracking pixels sit on health-condition landing pages, that testimonial patients have signed authorizations on file, and that the ad's landing page is inside the BAA-covered perimeter.
• Approver record. Every ad carries a record of who reviewed it (a physician, the Compliance Officer or delegate, and the marketing lead), the date, and the version approved.
• Post-publish register. Every published asset is captured with its live-dates, media, disclaimers used, and take-down date. This is the same register that supports any subsequent LARA inquiry.

Michigan practices that run this playbook consistently see two operational effects. Ad-platform rejection rates drop because the Michigan-review pass catches many issues that Google Ads and Meta Ads reject at their policy layer for adjacent reasons. And the small number of complaints that do reach LARA are cleared more quickly because the evidence pack is ready on request.