Methodology

What this page is

A plain-language statement of how ClinicCompare collects, verifies and publishes the information on this site. It exists so that patients, clinicians, regulators, journalists and AI search engines can audit our process. If anything here is wrong, please email info@cliniccompare.co.nz and we will correct it within 5 working days.

Data sources, field by field

Every field on every clinic profile has one of the following provenance categories. Where a field is empty on a clinic page, it means we don't have a verified value for it.

Verification steps before a clinic is listed

1. Clinic website resolves on HTTPS and the business operates from the address listed.
2. Where a regulator registration number is supplied (Medical Council, Dental Council, Physiotherapy Board, etc.), the number is verified against the public register at listing time.
3. Where a clinic claims an NZ professional society membership (NZAPS, NZSCM, NZDA, etc.), membership is verified against the society's public member directory.
4. Duplicate detection: every new listing is checked for name, address and phone overlap with existing rows. Confirmed duplicates are merged. The 2026-05-27 audit removed 3 duplicate entries (Eye Institute, Re:Vision, Bowen Eye Clinic) and corrected 1 mis-labelled clinic (Auckland Plastic Surgery → Brandon Adams Plastic Surgeon, Tauranga).
5. Templated / fabricated listings: any entry without a verifiable website, address AND phone is removed. The 2026-05-27 audit removed 49 such templated entries (e.g. "Capital Hair Restoration", "Wellington Dental Centre").

What we don't do

• We do not publish fabricated star ratings or review counts. Where a rating is shown, it has been provided by the clinic with supporting evidence.
• We do not use "best", "top", "leading", "premier", "world-class" or other superlatives without a sourced basis — all such language was removed from the site as part of the 2026-05-26 ASA Therapeutic Code compliance sweep.
• We do not represent unregistered practitioners as registered. We link to the relevant NZ Medical Council / Dental Council register from every page that names a practitioner so you can independently verify.
• We do not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. ClinicCompare is an information platform only. The HPCA Act 2003 and ASA Therapeutic & Health Advertising Code govern what we can publish about medical procedures and we operate within both.
• We do not scrape, cache or republish Google reviews, Facebook reviews or any third-party review content beyond what their terms of service explicitly permit.

Compliance posture

ClinicCompare publishes within the following NZ legal framework. Each line links to the underlying instrument and is enforced by automated audits + a pre-commit gate.

• HPCA Act 2003 — protected titles. We do not represent unregistered practitioners as registered. Act text.
• ASA NZ Therapeutic & Health Advertising Code — no superlatives without evidence, no misleading therapeutic claims. Code. Enforced by scripts/audit-medical-claims.cjs, baseline locked at 0 violations.
• Medicines Act 1981 / Therapeutic Products Act 2023 — restrictions on therapeutic claims. Medicines Act.
• Privacy Act 2020 + Health Information Privacy Code 2020 — health information has stricter consent than generic data. See our Privacy Policy.
• Fair Trading Act 1986 / Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 — no misleading or deceptive conduct.

How to request a correction

1. Email info@cliniccompare.co.nz with the URL of the page, the specific claim or data point, and a source we can verify against.
2. We acknowledge correction requests within 2 working days and resolve them within 5 working days.
3. For factual disputes that cannot be resolved by checking a public source, we will record the dispute on the clinic's profile and link to the clinic's preferred wording.
4. For Privacy Act 2020 access / correction / deletion requests, see our Privacy Policy.