Transparency is about knowability, not about level
Discussions about clinic pricing collapse quickly into whether prices should be published at all, which is a commercial question with reasonable answers on both sides. This instrument sets that argument aside and assesses something narrower: whether a prospective patient can find out what they will pay before they commit.
That is a different question from whether a headline figure appears on a page. A clinic can publish a price for every treatment and still fail, because the price omits the consultation fee, omits the review, omits the possibility that a second session is needed, and does not say whether the figure is per area or per session. The patient has a number and not a cost.
The criteria are therefore weighted towards the surrounding costs rather than the headline. Inclusions, exclusions, review costs, correction costs, deposits and consultation fees together carry more of the score than the presence of a figure does, because those are the items that produce the complaint six weeks later.
There is also a consumer protection dimension. Material information about price presented in a way that omits significant conditions, or that presents a monthly finance figure prominently while the total cost appears in small print, engages consumer protection law as well as the advertising codes. The instrument does not adjudicate that; it identifies where the risk sits.
How to score this scorecard
Give the task to somebody who has never seen your price list. Ask them to establish, using only published material, what a named treatment would cost them in total including any consultation and any likely review. Watch where they stop.
Score criteria one to five from what they could establish. Where they had to make an assumption, the criterion scores 1 at most, because the assumption is what produces the later complaint.
For criterion six, check whether the consultation fee position appears before booking rather than in a confirmation email.
For criterion eight, look at any finance material and compare the prominence of the monthly figure with the prominence of the total cost and the rate. If they differ, score 0. The FCA's consumer credit pages set out why this matters where regulated credit is involved.
For criterion twelve, compare the price on your website, your printed list, your social media highlights and any third-party listing. Disagreement is common and scores 0.
Common scoring errors
Scoring "from" prices as a stated figure. A from price without the factors that move it scores 1 at most, and criterion ten exists to test whether those factors are named.
Omitting the consultation fee because it is redeemable. Redeemable against what, and under what conditions, is exactly the information the criterion asks for.
Treating a top-up as clinical rather than financial. Patients experience it as a cost. State the position.
Scoring consistency from the website alone. Third-party listings and social media price posts are where prices go stale.
Presenting a monthly finance figure as the price. This is the most common serious failure in the sector's advertising and it scores 0 on criterion eight.
Deciding whether to publish prices at all
Clinics that decline to publish prices usually give one of three reasons: price depends on assessment, competitors would see them, or a figure without context misleads. Each has some force and none of them prevents scoring well on most of this instrument.
Where price genuinely depends on assessment, publish the range and name the factors that move it. That satisfies criteria one and ten and is more useful to a patient than a single figure would be.
Where the concern is competitors, note that they can telephone. The information asymmetry created by withholding prices operates mainly on patients.
Where the concern is context, the remedy is to supply the context rather than to withhold the number. A price accompanied by inclusions, exclusions and the review position is not a decontextualised figure.
A clinic that decides against publication after considering this should record the decision and accept the score, then concentrate on the criteria that apply at consultation: inclusions, exclusions, review costs and deposit terms can all be stated clearly in a written summary even where nothing appears on the website. The consultation process scorecard covers that written summary, and the finance disclosure checklist covers payment plans in detail.