Consulting your malpractice insurance carrier’s attorney: what you might not know…..

Most clinicians take great care to maintain an ethical and legally compliant practice. Yet, despite these efforts there are still instances where consultation with available written materials and other clinicians yields incomplete answers. Clinicians have several options for additional help when the questions concern compliance with applicable statutes, regulations, and case law. In these situations clinicians often turn to attorneys for assistance in navigating these difficult dilemmas.

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Informed Consent (part 2): what it is and what it isn’t

A previous post discussed the origins and development of informed consent. Hopefully that provides a good basis for understanding this post, which is a discussion about what informed consent is and isn’t. Many clinicians have come to know informed consent as a form, when it is in fact a discussion. Readers who haven’t seen the previous post on the origins of informed consent might want to read that post first (it can be found here), as it provides some of the background information for this post.

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Informed Consent (part 1): its origins and development

When asked about informed consent, most clinicians readily identify it as a piece of paper that is signed toward the beginning of a professional encounter. This is true. However, the real truth is that informed consent is actually much more. Surprisingly, an explanation of informed consent also requires a bit of an excursion into the legal worlds of battery and contracts.

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Your Malpractice Insurance….

Professional liability and risk management tend to be some of the more stressful topics for most clinicians. Receiving a license to practice involves years of study and significant investments of energy and money. It is thus understandable that most clinicians go to great lengths to protect their ability to practice. Often this involves frequent anxiety about liability, licensure, and the ways in which exposure can be minimized.

Clinicians’ concerns notwithstanding, mental health practice remains one of the less risky health professions. This is due to a number of factors, including the physically noninvasive nature of treatment, ongoing training in ethics, and a professional culture that looks favorably upon consultation and supervision. Most clinicians are very concerned about limiting the ways in which they are personally, professionally, and financially exposed to litigation and it is because of this the vast majority of clinicians carry professional liability insurance.

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Professional Wills

Most clinicians aspire to have a fairly good record-keeping system, as well as procedures for maintaining the confidentiality of those records. As a profession, therapists tend to be quite concerned about record-keeping. This concern is appropriate. Unlike some businesses, the information contained in clinicians’ practice related records is highly sensitive and deserving of great care.

It is surprising, then, that many clinicians have not made arrangements for the care of these records if the clinician is suddenly and unexpectedly unable to continue their practice, such as if the clinician dies or is injured. This may be due to a number of factors, such as a general reluctance on the part of many people to engage in end of life planning, communicate advanced medical directives, write wills, etc. But procrastinate or not, this is something that clinicians really should do.

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