Staff photos and bios on a practice website

A team page is one of the pages patients open before they book. They want to see who will answer the phone, who will draw the blood and who will sit across from them in the exam room. Real photos of real staff, with names, roles and a short bio, make a practice feel known before the first visit. They also put an employee’s face and name into the practice’s advertising, and that is a use state law cares about.

This guide covers the staff side of the team page: consent to use an employee’s name and photo, what to do when someone leaves, when to hold back a name for safety reasons, and the license display rules that touch bios and badges. Patients who appear in marketing are covered in our guide to patient photo and video consent, and recruiting photos and careers pages are covered in our guide to medical practice job ads. Clinician credentials on bios have their own guides on physician bio pages and board certified claims and doctor titles for non-physicians. Models and actors shown as clinicians or patients in ads are covered in our guide to stock photos, models and actors in healthcare ads. What staff post about the practice on their own accounts is covered in our practice social media policy guide.

This is general information, not legal advice. Sources cited were checked on October 30, 2026: New York Civil Rights Law section 50, California Civil Code 3344 and Business and Professions Code 680, Florida Statutes 540.08, 456.072(1)(t) and 480.0465, Code of Virginia 8.01-40 and 18.2-216.1, 18 U.S.C. 248, and WCAG 2.2. Rules differ by state, and employment, privacy and licensing rules can all apply to the same photo. Have a health care or employment attorney review your staff release form and team page before they go live.

Why a staff photo on the website needs consent

A team page is advertising. It exists to persuade a patient to choose the practice, and the staff on it are part of that pitch. State statutes can limit the use of a living person’s name or likeness for advertising or trade without consent. The four we read, listed below, do, and none of them makes an exception for employees.

New York. Civil Rights Law section 50 makes it a misdemeanor for a person, firm or corporation to use the name, portrait, picture, likeness or voice of a living person for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without first obtaining that person’s written consent, or a parent’s or guardian’s consent for a minor.
California. Civil Code 3344(a)(1) makes a person who knowingly uses another’s name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness for advertising or selling services without prior consent liable for damages: the greater of 750 dollars or actual damages, plus profits from the use, with punitive damages and attorney’s fees also available.
Florida. Statutes 540.08(1) bars publishing or publicly using a person’s name, portrait, photograph or other likeness for a commercial or advertising purpose without express written or oral consent, and 540.08(2) lets the person sue to stop the use and recover damages, including a reasonable royalty and punitive damages.
Virginia. Code 8.01-40 lets a person whose name, portrait, picture, voice or likeness is used for advertising without prior written consent sue to stop the use and recover damages, with punitive damages possible for a knowing use. Code 18.2-216.1 makes the knowing use of a Virginia resident’s name or picture for advertising without written consent a misdemeanor with a fine of 50 to 1,000 dollars.

The safest reading across these statutes is simple: get written consent from each staff member before their name, photo, voice or video goes into any marketing, including the website, social posts, ads, the Google Business Profile, brochures and email. Florida accepts oral consent, but New York and Virginia ask for written consent, and a signed form is the only record you can find when a question comes up years later.

What California says about employees in the background

California Civil Code 3344(c) speaks to employees directly. Where an employee’s photo or likeness in an ad is only incidental, and not essential, to the purpose of the publication, the law presumes that the failure to get the employee’s consent was not a knowing use. That presumption can be rebutted, and it only helps with incidental appearances. A team page photo, a bio, a staff spotlight post or a video where a named assistant walks a patient through the visit is the point of the content, not incidental to it.

Section 3344(b) also treats people as readily identifiable when someone viewing the photo can reasonably tell it is them, and it separates people singled out in a photo from people who are only part of a definable group, such as a crowd. A posed group shot of the front desk team singles each person out.

What a staff marketing release should cover

A release written for staff is different from a patient authorization. It is about the employee as a team member, not about their health information. A clear release covers these points:

Which items are covered: name, photo, video, voice, job title, credentials and bio text.
Where they may appear: website, social media, paid ads, the Google Business Profile, print, signage and email.
Whether the employee may choose first name only, a photo without a name, or no photo at all.
How the employee can review and correct their bio before it goes live.
What happens when the employee leaves: how fast the practice removes them from the website and listings, and which older materials stay, such as printed brochures already handed out or past social posts.
How to withdraw consent while still employed, and who to ask.
A statement that signing is voluntary and that declining has no effect on the job.
Date, signature and a copy for the employee.

Keep the release separate from the offer letter and the handbook acknowledgment. A consent buried in onboarding paperwork is harder to show as a real choice, and a standalone form is easier to find when someone asks to be taken down.

If a staff member is also a patient of the practice, and the photo, video or caption shows their own care, treat it as a patient image and use the patient authorization process instead.

When a staff member leaves

A former employee still shown on the team page tells patients they can book with someone who is no longer there, and it uses a person’s likeness to promote a business they no longer work for. Build removal into offboarding so it happens on a schedule rather than when someone complains.

Add website and listing removal to the offboarding checklist, next to keys, logins and the phone tree.
Remove the bio page, the team page card and any booking option tied to the person, and redirect the old bio URL to the team page so links do not break.
Remove or update the person on the Google Business Profile, including practitioner listings, and on directory and insurance listings the practice controls.
Search the site for the person’s name: blog posts, testimonials pages, FAQ answers, image alt text and page titles.
Pause or edit paid ads, landing pages and video ads that feature the person.
Update scripts for the phone line, the online scheduler and any website chat tool so they stop offering appointments with the person.
Ask the departing employee, in writing, whether they want older social posts that show them taken down, and record the answer.

For a clinician leaving a practice, patient notice of the departure can also be governed by state medical board rules and the employment contract. That notice is a separate task from updating marketing, but the two should go out in the same week so the website does not contradict the letter.

Safety: when a full name is too much

A full name and a clear photo make a person easy to find outside work. For staff in a practice that offers reproductive health care, behavioral health, addiction treatment, gender-affirming care or other care that draws strong feelings, that exposure carries real risk. Federal law recognizes the risk for one group: 18 U.S.C. 248, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, makes it a federal crime to use force, threat of force or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate or interfere with a person because they provide reproductive health services. A statute that punishes threats after the fact does not make a staff member safe, so the website should not make them easy to find in the first place.

California’s name tag law shows the same concern in a clinical setting. Business and Professions Code 680(a) requires health care practitioners to wear a name tag with their name and license status, but lets the employing entity make an exception for individual safety or therapeutic concerns when the practitioner works in a psychiatric setting or a setting not licensed by the state.

Options a team page can offer, staff member by staff member:

Use: first name and role only, such as “[Name], Patient Coordinator”.
Use: a photo without a name, or a name without a photo.
Use: a team photo with no names attached.
Use: professional details only for clinicians who need to be named for licensing and booking, and no personal details for anyone.
Avoid: hometowns, children’s names, neighborhoods, gyms, churches, personal social media handles and personal email addresses in bios.
Avoid: photos taken outside the building that show a car, a house number or a street sign.
Avoid: image files whose file names or metadata hold a full name or a location the page does not show.

Ask each staff member which option they want before the photo shoot, write the choice on the release, and ask again if their circumstances change. A choice to stay unnamed needs no reason.

License numbers and license types on bios and badges

Clinician bios carry licensing rules that front desk bios do not. A few examples from the statutes we checked:

Florida, license type in ads. Statutes 456.072(1)(t) makes it a ground for discipline when an advertisement for health care services that names a practitioner does not identify the type of license the practitioner holds. A bio page or team card used to market services is a place to state it.
Florida, massage license numbers. Statutes 480.0465(1) requires each licensed massage therapist and massage establishment to include the license number in any advertisement of massage therapy services, including on the internet, along with the establishment’s address and phone number on file, with an exception for owners of more than five locations. A med spa or wellness practice that lists a massage therapist on its team page should check this before the page goes live. Our massage therapy marketing guide covers more.
California, name tags. Business and Professions Code 680(a) requires a health care practitioner to disclose name and license status on a name tag in at least 18-point type while working, unless the practitioner’s license is prominently displayed in a practice or office. It is a name tag rule, not a website rule, but the license status on the badge and on the bio should match.

Other professions and states set their own rules, and boards add more in their regulations. Before a clinician’s bio goes live, check the practice act and board rules for that profession in that state for license number, license type and title requirements.

Photos: your own, current and described

Our own rule for the sites we build: no stock photos of people presented as staff, clinicians or patients. A stock model in scrubs on a team page tells a patient that this person works at the practice. Under the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45 bars deceptive acts or practices, and a photo that implies something untrue about who provides care is a risk the practice does not need to take. Use photos of the actual team, taken with a release on file, and update them when people join or leave.

Each photo also needs a text alternative. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 asks that non-text content presented to the user have a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose. For a staff photo, the alt text can be the person’s name and role as the page shows them, such as “[Name], dental hygienist”, and nothing the staff member chose not to share. Our guide to website accessibility for medical practices covers the rest.

Bios that hold up

A staff bio is short marketing copy about a real person. The same rules that apply to the rest of the site apply to it.

Use: role, years with the practice if the staff member agrees, languages spoken, and what they help patients with.
Use: credentials exactly as the license or certificate states them, checked against the issuing body.
Use: a review by the staff member before each change goes live.
Avoid: superlatives about outcomes, such as “the best injector in the city”, that the practice cannot back up.
Avoid: stories about patients, even without names, unless the patient has signed an authorization.
Avoid: bios written in the employee’s voice that they did not read or approve.

Illustration

This example is invented to show the process. It does not describe a real practice or person. [Practice name] is a small family practice in Virginia rebuilding its team page. Before the shoot, the office manager hands each of the eight staff members a one-page release listing the website, social media, the Google Business Profile and print. Six sign for full name and photo. One medical assistant chooses first name and photo only. One front desk coordinator, who left a past job after harassment, chooses a team photo with no name. The page goes live with those choices, alt text matches what each card shows, and the office manager adds “remove from website, listings and ads within one week” to the offboarding checklist. When the medical assistant leaves a year later, the card comes down, the bio URL redirects to the team page, and the scheduler stops offering them as a contact the same day.

Checklist

A standalone written release for each staff member who appears by name, photo, voice or video.
A choice on the release: full name, first name only, photo only, team photo only or none.
Staff review each bio before it goes live.
Clinician bios state the license type, and license numbers where the state and profession require them.
No stock photos of people presented as staff or patients.
Alt text on each staff photo that matches what the person agreed to share.
No personal details in bios or image metadata.
Website, listing, ad and scheduler removal in the offboarding checklist, with a set deadline.
Old bio URLs redirected to the team page.
Releases stored where the office manager can find them.

How we help

We build websites, local search, Google Ads and lead generation and AI front desk tools for independent practices and health businesses. For team pages, that means card layouts that work with full names, first names or no names, bio templates with a license line, redirects for staff who leave, and a list of each place a staff member appears across the site, listings and ads so removal is quick. Our tools are built with HIPAA in mind. We confirm in writing what a BAA covers before any patient information flows through a tool, and if it is not covered, we do not route patient information through it. We are not a healthcare provider and we do not give legal or medical advice. For the wider rules, see our healthcare marketing rules hub.

Do I need written consent to put an employee’s photo on our website?

In New York and Virginia, the statutes on using a person’s name or picture for advertising ask for written consent, and California and Florida require consent too. A signed release from each staff member is the clear way to meet all of them.

Does employment itself count as consent?

None of the four statutes we read, New York Civil Rights Law 50, California Civil Code 3344, Florida 540.08 and Virginia 8.01-40, makes an exception for employees. California 3344(c) only creates a rebuttable presumption for incidental appearances, not for team page photos.

How fast should we remove a staff member who left?

No statute we read sets a deadline for the website. A short written deadline in your offboarding checklist, such as one week, keeps the site accurate and avoids using a former employee’s likeness to promote the practice.

Can a staff member ask to be taken off the website while still employed?

Write the answer into the release. A release that explains how to withdraw consent, and a practice that honors it without affecting the job, avoids a dispute later.

Can clinicians at a reproductive or behavioral health practice stay unnamed?

Front desk and support staff can use first names, photos without names or no listing at all. Clinicians may need to be named for licensing and booking, so share only professional details. California 680 lets employers in psychiatric and unlicensed settings make name tag exceptions for safety.

Do clinician bios need a license number?

It depends on the profession and state. Florida 480.0465 requires massage therapists to include their license number in advertisements, including on the internet, and Florida 456.072(1)(t) requires ads naming a practitioner to state the license type. Check each profession’s board rules.

Staff photos, names and bios on a practice website: consent, departures and safety