Pterion · Websites
A clinic website built to the rules.
A physician’s website is advertising under the College’s rules before it is anything else. We build the site, wire it to the clinic, and put a gate in front of publishing so the rules still hold a year after launch.
Assess Design Build Operate
What it involves
The rules first, then the design, then the wiring.
- 01
The advertising rules, in plain language. Nothing false, misleading or unverifiable; no comparative or superlative claims; no testimonials; titles and specialties shown only as the register allows. For aesthetics, Health Canada’s limits on naming prescription products to the public.
- 02
Privacy and security by design. Forms that ask for the minimum, no health information in an email or a web address, a plain-language privacy page, consent for marketing email under CASL, analytics that wait for consent. Encrypted connections, strict security headers, and bot protection on every form.
- 03
Accessibility to WCAG AA, the standard AODA uses: keyboard, contrast, labels, captions, structure.
- 04
A site that does something. Bookings, reminders, enquiries and recall flow into the systems the clinic already runs, not into an inbox nobody owns.
- 05
A publish gate. Every change is scanned before it goes live: banned words, restricted product names, missing disclaimers, broken links, accessibility. The rules hold after the launch meeting.
- 06
Search. Pages written for the questions patients actually type, with the clinic’s facts marked up so search engines and AI assistants cite them correctly.
What we have built
- The website that physically can’t say the forbidden word A restricted drug name cannot reach a public page: the publish step refuses it before a person has to remember. Applies to Medical · Dental · Aesthetics
- A website that does something Enquiries and bookings land in the clinic’s own records with consent recorded at source; nothing waits in an inbox. Applies to Medical · Dental · Aesthetics
- A nineteen-language clinic site where compliance and search rankings survive translation If the English changes, the build fails until every language is re-translated; each language is scanned for banned claims in that language. Applies to Medical
- Missed calls became leads; quiet leads got a follow-up Every unanswered call became a lead with a consented text; every lead that went quiet got a scheduled follow-up instead of being forgotten. Applies to Dental · Aesthetics
What we will not do
- Write a testimonial page, a before-and-after gallery or a “best in Toronto” line because a competitor has one. The College reads those pages too.
- Name a prescription product on a public page where the rules do not allow it, however the marketing brief is worded.
- Put patient information through a form, a chat widget or an analytics tool that sends it somewhere the clinic does not control.
- Ship a page that fails the accessibility check. A firm that sells the gate does not skip it on its own work.
Questions clinics ask
- Can a physician’s website show patient reviews?
- The College’s advertising rules restrict testimonials, and the dental and aesthetic regulators have their own limits. We design the site so reviews live only where the rules allow them and are never quoted on a page that advertises a service. Confirm the current position with the College or counsel before publishing any review.
- Do you rebuild an existing site or start again?
- Usually again. Most clinic sites were built as posters, and the problems are in the copy and the forms, not the colours. We keep the addresses that rank, redirect the rest, and rebuild on a base that can be gated.
- What does the publish gate actually check?
- Every change, before it goes live: words the advertising rules restrict, product names the rules restrict, a missing disclaimer, broken links, and accessibility failures. A change that fails does not publish, and a person is told what failed and where.
The first step
Send us the address of the current site. We read it the way the College and a patient would and send back a short written note: what would have to change, what can stay, and what we would build. No obligation.
Start with an assessment No obligation · a diagnosis first
What it costs
A website is quoted as a fixed price for a fixed scope, in writing, before work starts. Operating it afterwards, with the gate, updates and hosting, is a monthly amount agreed in advance. Nothing is billed that was not quoted.
We have run the front desk we are selling the fix for.
Being a clinician is hard enough. Running the business around it is not taught in professional school, and the field is corporatizing around the owners who learned it the hard way.
We exist to help clinician-owned clinics stay independent and succeed: to make the operation efficient, to teach what we had to learn ourselves, and to give owners back the part of the work they love.
an assessment.
No obligation · a diagnosis of the problem and what can be done about it · every scope quoted on its own