Packages carry a clinical commitment, not only a financial one
A course package sold in advance commits a patient to a number of sessions before anybody knows how they respond to the first. That is a clinical fact with commercial consequences, and it is the reason this rubric includes criterion seven, which asks whether committing in advance makes sense for the treatment in question.
For some treatments it plainly does: a course is the standard protocol and the number of sessions is known. For others it does not, and a package creates pressure to complete a course that clinical judgement might otherwise stop. A patient who has paid for six sessions and responds badly to the second is in an awkward position, and so is the clinician.
The rest of the rubric addresses description. Reference prices that were never charged, offers that cannot be booked, expiry periods shorter than the clinical interval, and terms delivered with the receipt are all failures of description rather than of generosity, and consumer protection law addresses several of them directly.
Criterion eight, pressure techniques, connects this instrument to the consent and cooling-off checklist. An offer expiring within the period a patient would use to reflect is a commercial device operating on a clinical decision, and it is scored 0 in both instruments for the same reason.
How to score this rubric
List every current offer and package, including ones running only on social media. Score by the weakest.
For criterion one, check whether any was price was actually charged, to actual patients, for a meaningful period. If the higher figure exists only to make the offer look larger, score 0.
For criterion two, attempt to book the offer. Offers advertised without capacity are common and score 0.
For criterion three, compare the package price with the sum of individual prices. If a patient cannot perform that comparison from published material, score below 3.
For criteria four to six, look for the terms. If they are not available before payment, score criterion ten 0 regardless of how good they are.
For criterion seven, ask a clinician whether they would recommend committing to the full course before seeing the response to the first session. Score by their answer, not by the commercial logic.
For criterion nine, examine any competition. A treatment given as a prize still requires assessment, and the winner must be able to decline without consequence.
Common scoring errors
Treating a list price nobody pays as a genuine reference price. The test is whether it was actually charged.
Scoring expiry as stated because it appears in the terms. Criterion ten asks whether the terms were available before purchase.
Setting expiry periods shorter than the clinical interval. A package of six sessions at six-week intervals cannot be completed in six months.
Regarding a giveaway as marketing rather than as treatment. A prize that is a procedure requires assessment, consent and the ability to decline.
Assuming a discount justifies a shorter reflection period. It is the reflection period that the discount is operating on.
Designing offers that score well by construction
The efficient use of this rubric is at the design stage. An offer designed against the ten criteria takes no longer to create and does not need remediation.
Four rules produce most of the score. Price the package by itemising what it contains and what each element would cost separately. State the expiry, the transferability and the unused session position on the same page as the price. Never apply an expiry that falls inside a reflection period. Ask a clinician to sign off that committing in advance is appropriate for that treatment.
For competitions, treat the prize as a treatment throughout: assessment first, consent as normal, and an unconditional route for the winner to decline or to take a non-clinical alternative. Publish the rules. Disclose the promotion as advertising.
Keep a single document listing current offers, their terms and their end dates, and reconcile it against what is actually published monthly. Offers that have ended remain visible on social media and third-party listings long after they close, which is both a description failure and a source of complaints.
Where the offer is presented alongside finance, run the finance disclosure checklist as well, since the combination of a discount and a monthly figure is where prominence failures cluster.