What a patient is entitled to know

How we work

Why this page is shaped the way it is

A website for a medical practice cannot be written the way a website for a business is written, and the differences are not stylistic. The Code of Medical Ethics permits factual information about a practice and excludes misleading or comparative advertising, claims of superiority, patient testimonials used promotionally, and anything that encourages examinations or treatments which are not clinically indicated. A general and absolute ban on all advertising for healthcare has been held contrary to European law, so the position is not that nothing may be said; it is that what is said must be factual, proportionate and incapable of misleading. The practical result is a page with no testimonials, no success rates and no promised outcomes, and those absences are deliberate rather than an oversight.

What should take their place is information a patient can actually use, and the first of those is money. A physician in Belgium either adheres to the national agreement concluded between physicians and the sickness funds, adheres partially, or does not adhere, and that choice determines whether fee supplements may be charged above the agreed tariff. It is the most concrete financial fact about any practice and it is routinely discovered at the moment of invoicing, which is the worst possible time. Telling a patient beforehand costs nothing and removes the only genuinely unpleasant surprise in ordinary primary care.

The second is independence. Belgian law requires premiums and benefits granted by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to healthcare professionals, organisations and institutions to be disclosed and published on a national transparency platform, and the invitation of healthcare professionals to sponsored scientific events requires prior approval once hospitality passes defined thresholds. Where a practice also teaches and organises scientific meetings, as the registered activities here include, that framework is engaged directly rather than incidentally, and it belongs on the front of a site rather than buried in an annual return. Beyond those two disclosures sit the patient rights that apply to every consultation: information, free and informed consent given after being told purpose, risks, alternatives and cost, a carefully kept record with rights of access and copy, privacy, and recourse to a mediation service. Professional secrecy covers the rest, and is protected by criminal law.