In today’s video, we talk about how a disclaimer can help with you if you’re doing health coaching, even if you’re a medical doctor doing health coaching, chiropractor, psychologist, nursing professional, or other healthcare provider who wants to style themselves a health coach.  We’ll also talk about some of the limitations of a disclaimer, and common misperceptions.

Hi, I’m Michael H. Cohen, founding attorney of the Cohen Healthcare Law Group. We know this area super well, we help healthcare industry clients like you navigate health and wellness and FDA legal issues so you can launch, or continue to scale, your health and wellness business.

In other videos, we talk about the fine line between health coaching on one hand, and on the other hand, professional services such as those offered by a physician, licensed behavioral health therapist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, nurse, dentist, or other healthcare professional doing professional services.  In this video, we’ll zero in on the Consent & Disclosure form.

The form we draft for our health coaching clients is modeled on a medical consent form, but, if you’re doing health coaching, you can’t call this a “medical” consent, you got to call it something else.

As well, some states have laws regulating non-licensed practitioners of the healing arts, such as in California, there’s SB-577, codified as Business & Professions Code Section 2053.6.  These so-called “medical freedom” statutes can have specific things they require to be in your consent and disclosure.  For example, under SB-577, your consent and disclosure must state the following:

“You (your name) is not a licensed physician or psychologist or provider of medical or psychological services. The services offered by you (Provider) are alternative or complementary to healing arts services licensed by California.  The services that Provider offers are not licensed by California.”

Then, you are required to describe the nature of services you provide, the theory upon which they are based, and your education, training and experience with those services.

California law, in Business & Professions Code Section 2068, also separately requires you to include a specific notice if you are giving “nutritional advice.”  The Notice must state: “State law allows any person to provide nutritional advice or give advice concerning proper nutrition–which is the giving of advice as to the role of food and food ingredients, including dietary supplements.  This state law does NOT confer authority to practice medicine or to undertake the diagnosis, prevention, treatment, or cure of any disease, pain, deformity, injury, or physical or mental condition and specifically does not authorize any person other than one who is a licensed health practitioner to state that any product might cure any disease, disorder, or condition.”

One thing you’ll notice is that sometimes, State law will require you to make certain disclosures, such as those we talked about above.  One thing you need to know about your legal exposure is this:  A Consent form may be required under State law, and, it might even protect you from a patient lawsuit.  But a Consent and Disclosure will not necessarily protect you from charges of unlicensed practice of medicine, or possibly, psychology.  For that, you need to think about the behaviors and the conduct of the services and you can refer to our extensive blog posts about the limitations of health coaching and where you might be seeing as crossing the line into  professional practice.

Thanks for watching. If you still have questions, click on the link below, cohenhealthcarelaw.com/contact, to send us a message or book an appointment. Here’s to the success of your healthcare venture, we look forward to working with you soon.