Our Awards

Business Awards & Dentistry Awards

This page makes no claim of clinical superiority, because the advertising rules that govern registered health practitioners in Australia do not permit one. What it does instead is more useful: it explains how to read a dental award badge — yours, ours, or anyone's — because the difference between a rigorously assessed recognition and a paid listing is invisible on a website, and that difference is the entire point. The same problem in its wider form is covered in Finding a dentist online in Australia.

To verify anything about the clinicians here, go to ahpra.gov.au. That register is the authoritative record of registration, division, specialty and any conditions in Australia. It is free, it takes under a minute, and it is worth more than every badge on every dental website in the country. Dentists & Registered Specialists explains what the register actually shows, and Our Team lists every clinician here with their registration number.

What is on the public record for this practice

This practice's own published material lists twenty award line items across three programs, and every one of them is a business or consumer award rather than a clinical one:

• Seventeen Australian Business Awards wins, dated 2012 to 2025. Eleven are for Service Excellence; the remainder are Business Innovation (2024), Innovation (2013 and 2014), Employer of Choice (2014 and 2015) and Community Contribution (2017). That last one is written up at Community Contribution winner in the Australian Business Awards, and the underlying work at Supporting Charities.
• Two Telstra Business Awards, both in 2014 — Victorian Business of the Year, and Victorian Medium Business. Dr Kia Pajouhesh was interviewed at that ceremony: Interview with Dr Kia Pajouhesh at the 2014 Telstra Business Awards, with further items at Dentist wins Telstra Business Award and Smile Solutions lands a Telstra Business Award. More press is collected under Our Media.
• One Luxury Lifestyle Award, in 2025, for ‘Best Luxury Dental Clinic in Melbourne, Australia’.

A long list is not a clinical credential, and this practice's own published material is what shows why. Its description of the 2014 Telstra judging criteria names eight assessed areas: business achievements and vision; sales and marketing; customers; team; planning and performance; financials; innovation; and social responsibility. Not one of them assesses clinical care. That is not a complaint about the award — it is a business award doing exactly what it says on the label. It is simply not evidence about dentistry, and seventeen more of them would not be evidence about dentistry either.

Now apply the five questions below to the 2025 Luxury Lifestyle entry, and it does not survive them. The text accompanying it describes ‘an extensive research and selection process’ without naming one criterion, one assessor or one method — that is question 2 and question 3 both unanswered. And ‘Best ... in Melbourne’ is a superlative of precisely the kind section 133 exists to restrain. It appears in the list because this page reports what is on the record rather than curating it. It is not offered as evidence that the dentistry here is good, and it should not be read as any.

Why a page about awards contains no boasting

Advertising by registered health practitioners is regulated under section 133 of the National Law, which states that a person must not advertise a regulated health service, or a business that provides one, in a way that:

• “is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to be misleading or deceptive”;
• “offers a gift, discount or other inducement to attract a person to use the service or the business, unless the advertisement also states the terms and conditions of the offer”;
• “uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business”;
• “creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment”; or
• “directly or indirectly encourages the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services”.

An award badge can breach several of these at once. ‘Best dentist in Melbourne’ implies a comparative clinical judgment that no award actually makes. A badge whose selection method is undisclosed is misleading by omission. And an award decided by public voting is, functionally, an aggregated testimonial — which is exactly what paragraph (c) prohibits.

A badge on a website is advertising, in the formal sense. AHPRA's guidelines define advertising to include the “internet (including websites and social media)”, “public and professional lists”, and — the one that catches award programs directly — “public and professional directory listings”. There is no category of website decoration that sits outside the definition.

Who is responsible for a badge somebody else designed

The advertiser is — meaning whoever has control of the advertising. Under AHPRA's guidelines an advertiser has control if “they publish or authorise content or direct someone to publish or draft content (including a third party, staff member or marketing agency)”, or if “there is a mechanism for the advertiser to modify or remove content published by an unrelated publisher”. The guidelines put it flatly: “Advertisers are responsible for their advertising, so they need to check any content produced by others on their behalf.”

So “the awards company wrote the wording” is not a defence, and neither is “our marketing agency added it”. Depending on how a practice is structured, the principal practitioner, practice owner or director may carry that responsibility personally.

What is not the advertiser's responsibility: the guidelines are equally clear that advertisers “do not have to remove or try to remove a review on a website or in social media over which they do not have control.”

What getting this wrong costs

A breach of an advertising requirement is a criminal offence for which a court may impose a monetary penalty. In 2022 the National Law was amended and the maximum penalties were raised sharply: for an individual, from $5,000 to $60,000 per offence; for a body corporate, from $10,000 to $120,000 per offence. AHPRA records that as of July 2024 the increased penalties apply in all jurisdictions, including Western Australia.

This is why the caution on this page is structural rather than stylistic. It is also why a practice that displays a badge without being able to answer the five questions below is taking a risk it probably has not priced.

(Sources for this section and the one above: AHPRA, Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service; AHPRA, Testimonials: Understand the requirements.)

The four kinds of dental award, and what each is worth

1. Peer-assessed professional recognition

Fellowships, prizes and honours conferred by professional bodies and colleges — the Australian Dental Association, the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons, a specialist society.

These carry real weight. They are assessed by clinicians against declared criteria, and the conferring body can be contacted to confirm them. They are also usually held by an individual, not a practice.

One trap to watch in this category: an award or a course completion is not a specialty. Section 115 of the National Law provides that a person must not knowingly or recklessly take or use the titles ‘dental specialist’, ‘medical specialist’ or a specialist title for a recognised specialty unless registered in that specialty — and title-protection breaches carry penalties of their own. A badge that implies specialist status without specialist registration is a serious problem, not a marketing flourish.

2. Academic and research recognition

University prizes, published research, teaching appointments, examiner roles. Verifiable, dated, and attributable to a named person. These say something specific.

3. Business and industry awards

Chamber of commerce awards, business excellence awards, employer awards. These assess a business, not clinical outcomes, and the distinction matters enormously.

A well-run business is not the same thing as good dentistry. An award for customer service, workplace culture or growth is a genuine achievement and tells you nothing about whether the endodontics is any good. Both statements are true at once, and a practice that blurs them is doing something the rules exist to prevent.

4. Paid listings, directory badges and popularity polls

The largest category by volume and the least informative.

The tells:

• You can pay to enter, pay to be considered, or pay to display the badge. Many ‘top dentist’ programs are advertising products with an entry fee.
• The winner is decided by public vote, which measures marketing reach and how many patients a practice asked to vote.
• The criteria are not published, or are too vague to test.
• The organisation exists only to run the award.
• Everyone in the category seems to have won it.

Displaying such a badge is not dishonest in itself. It is simply not evidence of clinical quality — and a practice that leans on it heavily is telling you something.

The five questions that settle it

For any award badge on any dental website. Each of these now has the answer underneath it, because knowing which question to ask is only half of it.

1. Who conferred it — and can you find that organisation independently?

Name the organisation, then look for it without using the link on the practice's own page. What you are testing is whether the body has an existence apart from the award: a membership, a governing structure, a published constitution, other activities, a physical address. If the only trace you can find is the site that sells the badge, you have learned nothing except that the badge exists.

The reason this is worth two minutes is that the badge is not decoration in the legal sense — it is advertising, and the practice owns it. AHPRA's guidelines define advertising to include the internet, “public and professional lists” and “public and professional directory listings”, and they treat an advertiser as having control where “they publish or authorise content or direct someone to publish or draft content (including a third party, staff member or marketing agency)”. So whoever designed the badge, “Advertisers are responsible for their advertising, so they need to check any content produced by others on their behalf.” A practice that cannot tell you who conferred a badge on its own homepage has not done that checking.

2. What were the criteria, and are they published?

If they are not published, the badge means nothing you can rely on — and that is not merely unsatisfying, it is the specific failure the advertising rules describe. AHPRA lists advertising as potentially false, misleading or deceptive where it “misleads, either directly or by implication through the use of emphasis, comparison, contrast or omission” or “provides partial information and/or omits important details”. An unexplained ‘extensive research and selection process’ is exactly that shape.

There is a second, sharper test available, and almost no award program passes it. Where advertising makes a claim about a regulated health service, AHPRA requires ‘acceptable evidence’, and it names what generally does not qualify: “before and after studies with few or no controls”, “self-assessment studies”, “anecdotal evidence based on observations in practice”, and “outcome studies or audits, unless bias or other factors that may influence the results are carefully controlled”. A typical award entry is a self-assessment supported by material the entrant chose to submit — which is two of those four categories at once. That does not make the award fraudulent. It means the award cannot be used to support a claim about the quality of clinical care, because the regulator has already said this class of evidence will not carry one.

3. Who assessed it — clinicians, a panel, or the public?

Ask, and take an unclear answer as an answer. Public voting measures reach: how many people a practice asked, how large its mailing list is, how active its social media following is. It is a real measurement of something, and that something is not dentistry.

It also collides with the law in a way most practices have not thought through. Section 133 prohibits advertising that “uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business”, and a popularity award is an aggregate of exactly that. The line AHPRA draws falls on control, not sentiment: its definition of advertising excludes patient comments on a site “which is not used to advertise a regulated health service” and “not owned, operated or controlled by the practice or practitioner referred to in the comments”. So a vote collected and published by an independent organiser sits outside the definition — and the same result reproduced as a badge on the practice's own website is the practice using it to advertise. AHPRA adds that advertisers “should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on third-party websites as this may be considered using a testimonial to advertise a regulated health service.”

A panel is better than a vote, but only if you know who was on it. AHPRA's guidance on comparisons is that comparative advertising “used to promote a regulated health service over another can be misleading and/or deceptive because it can be difficult to include complete information when making comparisons”, and it names “comparisons between health outcomes and quality of care offered by different regulated health services” among the forms that must be “clear, accurate and supported by acceptable evidence”. ‘Best in Melbourne’ is that comparison in three words.

4. Was there a fee to enter, to win, or to display it?

Ask directly. A reputable award will answer, and a great many charge something — an entry fee, a ceremony table, a licence to use the logo. A fee does not make an award worthless. It changes what the badge is evidence of: not that a practice was selected from the field, but that it entered, and that entering cost money. Programs where the display licence is the actual product exist in large numbers, and on a website the two look identical.

The relevance to the rules is again omission. Advertising may breach the National Law where price information is unclear, inexact or vague, and AHPRA notes that “the public generally consider the word ‘free' to mean ‘absolutely' free” — the same instinct a reader applies to ‘award-winning’, which they take to mean independently chosen. If the fee is material to how the badge should be read, leaving it out is the misleading part, not the fee.

5. What year, and to whom?

A decade-old award to a practitioner who has since left is misleading by omission when presented as current, and it is one of the commonest problems on dental websites. So is an award to the practice displayed in a way that reads as an award to the clinician you are about to see, or the reverse. Ask which, and ask when. Both should be on the badge.

AHPRA's position on credentials generally is that they are useful and permitted when stated plainly: qualifications, further study, specific experience and memberships may be advertised “in an accurate and factual manner”, and it is acceptable to say where a qualification was issued. The caution attached is the relevant one here — advertisers must ensure that abbreviations or post-nominal letters “are not misleading by implying the practitioner has more qualifications, skill or experience than is the case”. An award presented without its year, or without naming who received it, does precisely that by leaving the reader to assume the most flattering reading.

And the hard boundary, worth repeating because the penalty is real: an award is never a specialty. The Dental Board of Australia recognises thirteen dental specialties in Australia, approved by the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council, and a practitioner must hold specialist registration in one to use its title. Misuse is an offence under the National Law: for an individual, a financial penalty of up to $60,000 per offence, imprisonment of up to three years, or both. No badge, course or prize substitutes for the entry on the register.

An award that cannot survive those five questions should not change your decision.

What actually predicts good dental care

None of it is on a badge, and What makes a truly great dentist? works through the same ground from the patient's side:

• Registration and, where relevant, specialist registration, verified at ahpra.gov.au. The single most useful check available to you, and almost nobody does it.
• A written treatment plan with ASDS item numbers and total costs, given before anything starts — see Understanding Your Treatment and the Price Guide.
• Options explained, including the option of doing nothing, and the material risks of each — the standard set in Rogers v Whitaker.
• A practitioner who refers when a case is outside their competence rather than attempting it — Why would I need to see a dental specialist? explains when that referral should happen.
• Time to think, without pressure and without a discount that expires — which is why every offer on Packages & Offers is published with its terms attached, as paragraph (b) of section 133 requires.
• A practice that answers the phone when something goes wrong afterwards, including out of hours — see Emergency Dentistry. Decisive, and only testable after the fact.

A practice that does all six and has never won anything is the better choice.

Why there are no patient testimonials anywhere on this site

Because the law does not permit them for clinical care. This is not modesty and it is not a stylistic choice — it binds every registered dental practice in Australia, and a dental website displaying clinical testimonials is in breach of the National Law however good the reviews are.

The line falls on control, not on sentiment. AHPRA's definition of advertising specifically excludes comments made by a patient about a practice or practitioner where the comments are on a site or account “which is not used to advertise a regulated health service” and “not owned, operated or controlled by the practice or practitioner referred to in the comments.” That is why an unsolicited review on a third-party platform sits differently from the same words reproduced on this website. AHPRA also warns that advertisers “should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on third-party websites as this may be considered using a testimonial to advertise a regulated health service.”

Reviews explains the rule in full, including what to look at instead.

Related pages: Reviews, Why Choose Us, Dentists & Registered Specialists, Our Team, Supporting Charities, Packages & Offers, Price Guide, Contact Us.

Common questions

Does an award prove that a dental practice provides better clinical care?

No. An award can recognise a business, individual, research project or popularity result, but it does not predict the outcome of your treatment. Registration, diagnosis, informed consent, a suitable plan and continuing care are more useful checks.

The regulator effectively says the same thing from the other direction. AHPRA lists “makes claims about providing a superior regulated health service” among the things that render advertising misleading, and requires that any comparison of “health outcomes and quality of care offered by different regulated health services” be supported by acceptable evidence. An award is not that evidence, which is why a badge can be displayed honestly but cannot be leaned on.

Is a fellowship, a membership or a set of letters after a name the same kind of thing as an award?

No, and the difference is worth understanding because one of them is genuinely informative. AHPRA's guidelines treat qualifications and memberships as useful: advertising them “can provide the public with useful information about a practitioner's education and experience”, and where a practitioner holds further or postgraduate qualifications, specific experience, or has completed specific courses, “it is acceptable to advertise that in an accurate and factual manner”, including saying where the qualification was issued. A degree or a college fellowship is an assessed, dated, checkable thing held by a named person.

The caution AHPRA attaches is the one to apply as a reader: post-nominal letters must not be “misleading by implying the practitioner has more qualifications, skill or experience than is the case”. So the useful question about any string of letters is what body issued it, in what year, and after what assessment — and whether it is a qualification, a membership you can join by paying a subscription, or a course attended for a weekend. All three are legitimate; they are not the same claim. And none of them is specialist registration, which appears only on the AHPRA register. See Dentists & Registered Specialists.

Why does the site not reproduce patient testimonials?

Australian health-service advertising is subject to restrictions on using testimonials. Patients may post independent reviews on platforms the practice does not control, but reproducing or using those comments in the practice's advertising is treated differently.

How should I compare two dental practices?

Compare the clarity of their assessment and written plan, practitioner qualifications, referral behaviour, options including doing less or nothing, follow-up arrangements and total long-term cost. An award should be secondary to those factors.

One practical warning belongs with that comparison, because it is the point at which awards are most often deployed. AHPRA names the vocabulary of urgency directly: “don't delay”, “act now before it's too late”, “don't miss out”, “time is running out”, “for a limited time only” create a sense of urgency and may be unlawful where they are tied to an unsubstantiated suggestion that your health will suffer if you do not act. A badge paired with a deadline is a sales sequence, not a clinical recommendation.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000 — see Location. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au, or the details on Contact Us. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment.

This page contains general information about how awards and advertising work in Australian dentistry. It is not clinical or legal advice. Statutory text and guideline wording quoted above are reproduced from the National Law and from AHPRA's published guidelines as they stood when this page was written. Advertising requirements are set by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the Dental Board of Australia and change over time; the current guidelines are published at ahpra.gov.au.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.