The following article was authored by A. Steven Frankel, Ph.D., J.D. and myself.  It was published in the Fall 2010 issue of The California Psychiatrist, a publication of the California Psychiatric Association: Professional Wills:  Protecting Patients, Family Members and Colleagues A.    Steven...

There were some discussions about my article on the standard of care and to respond to some questions I posted this followup explanation that provides my take on why psychologists so frequently turn on each other:

What is the “Standard of Care,” and why should you want to know about it? by Adam Alban, Ph.D., J.D. What is “the standard of care?”  Do you know?  Odds are, even if you’ve never heard the term, you’ve found yourself wondering about it.  If you’ve ever asked yourself, “what...

This is a common question posed on practitioner listservs.  Some people have very strong feelings about this issue.

I periodically receive calls from clinicians who are informed by previously unknown insurance companies that they are empaneled.  That is to say, practitioners receive notifications from an insurance company that a patient they are seeing has coverage and that they must accept the reimbursed rate offered...

The following article was authored by myself and A. Steven Frankel, Ph.D., J.D. It appeared in a slightly altered format in the September/October 2008 issue of The California Psychologist, the newsletter of the California Psychological Association. Working with Multiple People in Therapy: A Refresher...

This is a reminder: reports that clinicians make of suspected abuse are highly confidential. Under California law, reports of suspected child abuse and information contained in those reports may only be disclosed to persons or agencies who coordinate the investigation of these reports.

If you aren’t a “covered entity” (the term HIPAA uses to identify healthcare providers under its authority) do you need to care what HIPAA says? In these situations is HIPAA irrelevant? The answer is both “yes” and “no.”

This is a particularly troublesome dilemma and one that most clinicians dread.  We take great care to avoid such a situation, and in the event that a fax or letter gets to the wrong person most clinicians are unsure about whether the unintended recipient has any legal responsibilities to avoid further...

Huge numbers of clinicians have disclaimers at the end of email messages that say something like this: “The information contained in this email is CONFIDENTIAL. If you have received this message in error or without the express direction of the original author, please notify the sender and delete this...