If you work in an agency, hospital, or large group practice, do you still need your own professional liability insurance?  Doesn’t your employer’s policy cover you?

Please feel free to forward a link to this post to all relevant email lists and/or parties. I and a number of other attorneys who work with psychologists in California have noticed a significant trend.  We have become aware of a significant number of Board of Psychology (BOP) denials of supervised professional...

This is a friendly reminder: if you have professional liability insurance, it is a good idea to make sure it covers board complaints.

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.”

On February 20th, 2008, the Court of Appeal of the state of California, Second Appellate District, published an opinion in the nature of the psychotherapist-patient privilege for convicted sex offenders undergoing voluntary psychotherapy.

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...

Rightly or wrongly, HIPAA is perceived by many clinicians as an administrative nightmare. For those who aren’t already compliant, the task of becoming HIPAA compliant isn’t one that clinicians relish. Most clinicians who have practices that need to be HIPAA compliant accomplished this task a long...

Consultation with an attorney is activity that most mental health clinicians engage in on an infrequent basis. As a general matter, mental health practice is a profession that sees a relatively low number of lawsuits. In addition, many clinicians have the option of consulting with an attorney provided...

Another of the more persistent myths in mental health practice is whether certain acts require the approval of two physicians. In the last 6 months I have been asked the following question, in varying form, four times: “Is it true that if two physicians sign off on _______, this satisfies the legal...