The patient who reads a success rate on your website can open the official registry and look up your centre.

Picture this: a 39-year-old patient in London compares three clinics in Barcelona from her sofa. The first promises a very high success rate on its home page, in large type. The second gives no figure at all. The third shows a percentage for each age group, with the year and a link to the official registry. She opens the registry, looks up all three and finds that the first clinic’s figure looks like nothing she sees there. She does not read the rest of its website.

In Spain, the results of each assisted reproduction centre are not a secret. The law requires them to be published, and anyone can look them up. That changes what it means to put a figure on your website.

What the law says.

Law 14/2006 on assisted human reproduction techniques says in Article 3 that the techniques may only be used when there is a reasonable chance of success, and after the woman has been informed of her chances of success, the risks and the conditions of treatment. Article 22 requires the activity registry to publish, at least once a year, each centre’s data: the techniques it performs and the success rates in reproductive terms achieved by each centre with each technique, together with any other data that helps patients judge the quality of care.

The 2022 Code of Medical Ethics of the Spanish General Council of Medical Associations adds the other half. Its Article 88 requires medical advertising to be objective, prudent and truthful, so that it does not raise false hopes. Its Article 89 treats using advertising to foster misleading hopes of a cure as contrary to medical ethics.

What the registry publishes.

The registry that fulfils this role today is run by the Spanish Fertility Society, SEF. According to the SEF itself, it is not the official registry described in the law, but the Ministry of Health has treated it as the National Registry since the 2014 data, while it finishes setting up its own platform, and so participation is mandatory for centres. Each year an independent company checks the data of more than 10% of centres.

On its public website, anyone can look up results by centre. The latest are for 2023: births from pregnancies achieved in December only arrive by September of the following year, and quality checks come after that. Results are shown by technique and by the woman’s age, as a range rather than a single figure, and the range narrows the more cycles a centre performs. Next to them you see how many transfers involved one, two or three embryos, and how many pregnancies were single, twin or triplet.

The SEF stresses two things. That comparing pregnancy rates directly between clinics can be misleading, because they depend on age, diagnosis and the number of embryos transferred. And that the share of single pregnancies is the main indicator of a centre’s good practice. That is why it publishes no ranking.

What I do not know.

I have not found any published sanction in Spain against a clinic for the success rate it advertised on its website, and I do not know whether one exists. I do not know when the Ministry will finish setting up its own platform, or whether that will change how the data are published. Health advertising also depends on regional rules that differ across Spain. I am not a lawyer. Which figure your clinic may publish, and with what explanation, is a question for your medical director and your legal counsel.

The blind spot: translation changes the figure.

Think of patients who come from the United Kingdom. There, the fertility regulator, the HFEA, publishes for each clinic the births per embryo transferred, counting twins as a single birth, and the births per egg collection. It warns that none of these figures can tell a person their individual chance of success. If the English version of your website translates a pregnancy rate per transfer as “success rate”, a British patient will read it as something it is not. And the figure does not live only on the home page: it appears in ads, presentations, chatbot answers and WhatsApp replies, sometimes with a different year in each place.

The highest figure on your website is the one that says least, if it does not explain what it measures.

Where I stand.

I believe a high-end fertility clinic should not compete with a percentage on its home page. It should be the clinic that shows the figure anyone can check: the same measure as the registry, by age group, with its year, with the share of single pregnancies and with the link so the patient can verify it herself. And in every language, the measure under its exact name. A patient who has seen three home pages with dazzling figures trusts the clinic that shows her how to read them. In fertility treatment, transparency is not a commercial risk. It is the argument.

What I would check.

• Every success figure you publish. On the website, in every language, in ads, brochures, the chatbot and WhatsApp replies.
• What each one measures. Pregnancy or birth, per cycle, per egg collection or per transfer, with own or donor eggs.
• Age and year. Whether the figure states which age group and which year it refers to.
• Consistency with the registry. Whether what the website says can be found, with the same measure, in your centre’s public results.
• Single pregnancies. Whether the website talks about safety as well as success.

Where to start.

1. This week

   Look up your centre

   Open the public 2023 results and read them as a patient would.

2. This month

   Make the list

   Every success figure your clinic publishes, where, in which language and from which year.

3. This quarter

   Rewrite with the medical team

   One way of presenting results, reviewed by your medical director and legal counsel, identical in every language.

4. Every year

   Update

   When the registry publishes new data, the website changes the same month.

A British patient reads “success rate” on your website. To her it means something specific: a baby at home. Then she opens the official register and looks up your centre.

Do the two figures match? Do they measure the same thing? And the question that matters more than any percentage: after reading both, does she trust your clinic more, or less?

If you would like me to review which figures your website shows today, in every language, and how they could help a patient choose rather than push her away, start with the Strategic Diagnostic. Which results your clinic may publish is for your medical director and your legal advisers to decide, not a designer.