In retail, one franc is a loss leader. In Swiss medicine, it can reach your licence.

February 2017. A dental clinic in the canton of St. Gallen sends an advert to the cantonal Department of Health for review, as its operating licence requires. The text, in German, offers the youngest patients an orthodontic assessment, including a cost estimate and a dental cleaning, “for just CHF 1” until the end of March. Two weeks later the Department replies: not permitted. By then the advert is already on Facebook. From the end of March it runs several times in a local newspaper anyway.

In almost any other industry this would be a sensible opening. A symbolic price lowers the threshold, and the consultation does the rest. In Swiss medicine, that very logic is the problem.

What the court decided.

In May 2017 the Department banned the advert, issued a formal warning, threatened a penalty for disobeying an official order and charged a fee of CHF 2,500. The clinic appealed. On 17 January 2019 the Administrative Court of St. Gallen dismissed the appeal and ordered the clinic to pay a further CHF 2,000 in court costs.

The reasoning is blunt. In practice, the offer amounted to screening children, something no law mandates. It was an offensive attempt to acquire patients that went far beyond permissible information. And in the court’s words, by promoting a service that is by nature paid for as almost free, the clinic was using the methods of propaganda. That the price was one franc rather than zero changed nothing. The Department had already called the amount symbolic.

To the authority, a symbolic price is not a price. It is a free offer with a different label.

The rule does not stop at the St. Gallen border.

The basis is Article 40(d) of the Swiss Medical Professions Act. Anyone practising a university medical profession under their own professional responsibility may only advertise in a way that is objective, meets a public need and is neither misleading nor intrusive. That applies across Switzerland to doctors, dentists, chiropractors, pharmacists and vets. The St. Gallen court added that the same principles apply when a private healthcare facility promotes such services. Each canton supervises its own facilities in its own way, but the federal rule for practitioners is the same everywhere.

The advert was not the first dispute. Since 2013 the Department had repeatedly reprimanded the clinic over its advertising, including leaflet drops and advertising on local buses. In 2015 it renewed the licence with a condition attached: every planned advert had to be submitted for review in advance. A claim that the clinic charged the lowest tariff point value in town had also been challenged, because it could not be objectively proven. Under the St. Gallen health law in force at the time, a licence is withdrawn after a warning if its conditions, including sound management, are no longer met. The warning was the last step before a possible withdrawal.

The part of the ruling almost nobody quotes.

The court is not against advertising. It writes that advertising reduces the information gap between patients and practitioners, creates transparency and helps newcomers become known. A clinic talking about itself is not the problem. Using an incentive to steer people towards treatment is, especially people who, as the court puts it, are often in a situation of subjective distress.

That is the lesson for every website. Factual information is welcome: what a first assessment includes, who carries it out, how a cost estimate is prepared, what a family can realistically expect to pay. A teaser price, a voucher or a discount on a medical service belongs in a different category, however ordinary online marketing has made them.

Where I stand.

I do not see this rule as a brake. I see it as an advantage. A clinic that lures with one franc attracts people who decide on price. A clinic that explains openly what a treatment costs, and why, attracts people who decide on trust. In medicine, the law demands what works at the top of the market anyway: inform, do not lure.

What I would check on the website and in campaigns.

• Every word that touches price. “Free”, “complimentary”, “offer”, “discount”, “voucher”, “only CHF” on every page, in ads and in posts, in every language.
• Every superlative. “Cheapest”, “best”, “leading”: if it cannot be objectively proven, it does not belong on the page.
• Factual cost information. What a first assessment covers, how the cost estimate is prepared and what range is realistic.
• Copy from agencies and ad platforms. Automatically generated ad text likes to suggest phrases such as “free consultation”. Someone has to read it before it goes live.
• A simple check before anything is published. An automation can scan new pages and ads for sensitive terms and flag them to a responsible person before the authority does.

Before your next campaign.

1. This week

   List every live campaign

   Website, landing pages, Google and social ads, platform profiles, newsletters.

2. Before launch

   Agree a list of sensitive terms

   In every language on the website, agreed with your legal adviser.

3. For every campaign

   Build in a sign-off

   A responsible person reads every text before it appears, including the automatically generated ones.

4. When in doubt

   Ask first

   The cantonal health authority or your legal adviser, before publication rather than after.

Open your latest campaign and read it the way a cantonal inspector would on a Monday morning, unhurried and with the law on the desk. Which word would they mark first?

Now the opposite question, the one that really matters. If you took the price, the urgency and the word “free” out of that campaign, what would you have left to convince a patient? If the answer makes you uneasy, the court did not create the problem.

If you would like me to review your website and your campaigns from this angle, start with the Strategic Diagnostic. Whether a specific advertisement is admissible in your canton is for the supervisory authority or your legal adviser to clarify.