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Is Your Informed Consent Based on Magical Thinking?

Curt and Katie chat about the strange, manipulative, or outright illegal and unethical policies that therapists put into their informed consent. We talk through court, payment, and jurisdictional policies (among others), exploring why these policies are so bad. We also give some advice on what to do instead.

Transcript

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In this podcast episode we talk about the ridiculous things therapists put in their informed consent

An old article from our friends over at CPH resurfaced talking about all the ways that therapists try to skirt laws or mandates with their informed consent. We thought some of this stuff sounded a bit like magical thinking.

What goes into an informed consent?

“I feel like my informed consent paperwork expands each time I go to a law and ethics workshop…Basically what I try to do in my informed consent paperwork is clearly say what therapy is, how we can operate together, what the limits are, what their rights are, and how if they needed to make a complaint, they could make a complaint and talk through all of it…So for me, informed consent is the piece of paper, and it’s the conversation I have in the first session or so.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

  • Policies and procedures
  • Risks and benefits for treatment
  • Social media and court policies
  • More information here:

What are the biggest concerns with therapist informed consent?

  • Forcing clients to sign illegal policies is in fact illegal
  • Putting undue force onto a client is wrong
  • Court avoidance clauses are not realistic and may be illegal
  • There are limits to the fee structures you can have clients agree to
  • You have to complete your legal responsibilities, even if a client signs something that says you do not have to do so
  • You can’t have someone agree to waive jurisdiction when they travel or consent to calling your services something different

“When does your responsibility to a client actually [start]? If some person reaches out to you from a therapist directory, they find you, they leave a voicemail to you. You’re not responsible for them yet…But it’s once you agree to services, that’s when they become your client…It’s your responsibility to do a proper intake, to be able to know whether or not you’re going to be able to help someone, and that’s what your screening processes are for. That’s what a thorough assessment is about. That’s what ongoing consent is about.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT

What do therapists need to do with their informed consent?

  • Make sure you don’t have any illegal or unethical practices in your informed consent
  • Don’t try to “game” the system to protect yourself from your legal and ethical responsibilities

 

Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

Articles:

Disclosure to Patients – “No Court For Me” (?) – CPH Insurance: Avoiding Liability Bulletin – June 2015

Ten Reminders for Therapists about Fees by Ann Tran Lien (this article is in the Members Only section on camft.org)

Duty to the Patient – When Does It Begin? – CPH Insurance: Avoiding Liability Bulletin – February 2021

Package pricing comes with risks for therapists – High Pass Education: Psychotherapy Notes

Nicol Stolar-Peterson

 

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:

When Doing “No Harm” Isn’t Good Enough: Bringing beneficence to your clients

An Expert Witness Weighs in on Therapist Malpractice: An interview with Dr. Frederic Reamer

How Much Autonomy Do Therapy Clients Deserve? Balancing client autonomy with therapist skill

What Actually is Therapy?

CYA for Court, An interview with Nicol Stolar-Peterson, LCSW, BCD

Bad Business Practices

When is it Discrimination?

Am I Honoring My Personal Values OR Am I Discriminating? An exploration of ethics for modern therapists

Are Therapy and Coaching All That Different?

The Dividing Line Between Coaching and Therapy

 

Who we are:

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast therapists about things that we do in our profession, the things that we do for our clients, the things that we think that we do that are smarter than everything else. And this episode is inspired by an article that has come out somewhat recently. It’s actually a reprint of an article printing. It’s a re emailing of an article that was written some years ago. This article is titled, No Court for Me, and is written by Richard Leslie over at CPH about therapists who try to put into their informed consent language around, hey, I’m not gonna go to court. You can’t make me neaner, neaner, neaner, or some professional version of that. So we wanted to maybe expand on this episode a little bit around some of the other things that we’ve seen that show up in people’s informed consent. So that way it ends up feeling like it’s things that protect the therapists, but in reality, are just whimsical, fancy that don’t seem to actually be enforceable and could actually be unethical or even illegal in some cases. So before we get into the bad, Katie just tell me a little bit about your informed consent paperwork.

Katie Vernoy 0:12
I feel like my informed consent paperwork expands each time I go to a law and ethics workshop. And so I’ve got social media policy saying that I’m not going to be friends with clients on social media. I’ve got a court policy which our friend Nicole solar Peterson has put together that seems really sound. I have the new Medicare language in there. Basically what I try to do in my informed consent paperwork is clearly say what therapy is, how op how we can operate together, what the limits are, what the their rights are, and how if they needed to make a complaint, they could make a complaint and talk through all of it. Because I find that unless these are therapy veterans, they are going to just sign the paperwork and not have any idea what they signed. So for me, informed consent is the piece of paper, and it’s the conversation I have in the first session or so.

Curt Widhalm 2:49
And I think like you, each time that either I attend a law and ethics workshop or I give one myself, my paperwork expands. I think my informed consent is somewhere around eight pages now and primarily gives warnings about the risks and benefits of therapy, that, you know, hey, you might end up with really big bad feelings, and that’s part of the process of looking at really big bad feelings and also, and most importantly, with a lot of the complaints that I end up seeing going through either the licensing boards or I end up seeing on ethics committees, is people get really, really weird about money, and so being able to define and clearly define what your fee is, what it’s based on, ends up being a huge piece of what informed consent ends up being. Mine also…

Katie Vernoy 3:44
As well as like the cancelation policy, right?

Curt Widhalm 3:46
Cancelation…

Katie Vernoy 3:47
When you’re going to be charged when you wouldn’t be charged those types of things?

Curt Widhalm 3:50
Exactly. Yeah. So having good informed consent, we’ve got some other episodes on that. We’ll link to those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast com. We’ll put some other resources there as well. This episode is really about bad informed consents.

Katie Vernoy 4:06
Well, I think the first bad informed consent is none. Right?

Curt Widhalm 4:10
Then that’s not informed consent.

Katie Vernoy 4:13
That is uninformed consent or non consent.

Curt Widhalm 4:17
So, I want to point out a couple of things from the CPH article, and one of the things that Richard Leslie ends up pointing out is in making clients even sign paperwork that agrees to illegal things is kind of illegal in and of itself.

Katie Vernoy 4:37
Wow. Okay, yeah, that’s a good point.

Curt Widhalm 4:39
And especially when, as beginning your service with clients, forcing them to sign this paperwork before you’ll even start, can put them under undue stress, and then it’s upon the therapists who have to defend themselves in that situation. So here’s really kind of the big warning, where: Don’t have stupid stuff in your informed consent and…

Katie Vernoy 5:04
Or illegal stuff or unethical stuff.

Curt Widhalm 5:06
…and if this is making you go back and update your informed consent for some old clients to get back into compliance, that’s a reasonable action right now. But making sure that your informed consent is not being seen as something that puts undue force onto a client. A big part of consent into healthcare is knowing what is going to happen, knowing that it’s predictable, that it’s enforceable. And again, listen to our other episodes on good informed consent procedures here. But what ends up happening is that, as Richard Leslie points out, is depending upon the facts and circumstances of particular situation a licensing board conducting an investigation upon a complaint by a patient who signed such a form that the licensees actions in quote requiring the signing of such an agreement as a condition of treatment constitutes a violation of one or more laws, regulations or ethical principles. What this article goes on to talk about, in particular, around therapists who are either scared to death of going to court, don’t want to be involved with that at all. This article points out that you can’t just make people agree that you get to skip your legal responsibilities.

Katie Vernoy 6:26
Yes.

Curt Widhalm 6:27
This is akin to having people sign paperwork with you that says I don’t ever have to do jury duty.

Katie Vernoy 6:36
Or if I kill you, I’m not I’m not liable.

Curt Widhalm 6:39
I don’t know that I would ever put that one in writing, but there are a number of places of the law that specifically spell out what a healthcare provider’s responsibilities are, including confidentiality and privilege. And in fact, it’s such an important piece that most of the laws around this are times when you either can or have to breach it, which is a legal requirement. And so I get it. Nobody really wants to go to court. Nobody wants their day disrupted. You have to dress up, you have to go and potentially sit around for a very long time, you’re missing out on doing anything more interesting and fun, or missing seeing your other clients. And unless you’re somebody who really wants to be involved in like expert witness testimony kinds of stuff, that you don’t want to be doing this. So many people who have these clauses, I hear some sort of justification around I just want to make it to where it’s difficult. I want to give people, particularly in family courts, divorcing families, that I’m not going to go in and have to have my day ruined and therefore, if I can just get everyone to agree from the very beginning that I don’t have to go, then I won’t have to go.

Katie Vernoy 8:05
I understand why people would want to try to do that, but it’s not realistic. There’s going to be some attorney or some family member, or somebody that says, you know, who would be great at weighing in on this. It’s the therapist, right? And they can subpoena you, they can have a court order. There’s all these things that they can do. And I think we actually have an episode with Nicol Stolar-Peterson about when you what you can do, what you need to do, and also what are the things that you can’t do. You can’t move from as a therapist, being a fact witness to being a being a witness, an expert witness, like you can’t do both things. So, if you’re going to go to court, this isn’t the episode for you. We’ve got that somewhere else. We’ll put it in the show notes at mtsgpodcast com. But in your consent, I think it’s needs to be very clear, you can’t say you’re not going to court. That’s just not possible. Nobody can refuse to go to court indefinitely for all different reasons.

Curt Widhalm 9:03
And as Nicol points out, that’s a really fun way to find out at a traffic stop or violation some point down the road that, oh, you have a bench warrant out for you and for skipping going to court. So these kinds of informed consents sound almost like sovereign citizens who don’t have their driver’s license or their license plates, you know, paid up, they refuse to talk to government officials because they have some sort of interpretation of the Constitution that makes it to where logic doesn’t apply.

Katie Vernoy 9:44
I just do what I want.

… 9:45
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Curt Widhalm 9:47
Now to expand upon this, if we haven’t already driven home the point that you can’t just have this in your informed consent, some of the discussions that I’ve seen online in some of the therapist communities, sometimes in some of the law and ethics workshops that I give, even from some of my friends who are really, really trying to avoid these situations as well, is, well, I will just put in my informed consent that my court fees are astronomically high.

Katie Vernoy 10:20
Yeah, like, 5-6-7, times my normal fee.

Curt Widhalm 10:23
Exactly. I want to scare people out of this. I have one colleague who was brought into court a number of times by the same family, was routinely underpaid for the situation, and this was fairly early in my career, and I asked, well, at least you’re getting paid, right? And he said, You know, I try to raise my fee so that way it, you know, something where I try to make it worthwhile my time, but sometimes really litigious families just have way more money and are more keen on spending it to prove their ex spouse wrong, and no amount of money is worth the headache of having to do this over and over again.

Katie Vernoy 11:10
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 11:12
This is also something where, as you’re pointing out, and we’ll point to Nicol’s episode here again, that there are different kinds of witnesses. And depending on what kind of witness you are, can really impact what kinds of fees that you end up being able to be paid. And trying to be a treating expert witness, that’s, at least in California law language, what a treating healthcare provider would be, sounds like an expert witness. It is a kind of expert witness, but legal language in California says usual and customary fees to be paid for witness testimony and preparation. So, if your fee is, let’s say, $200 per session, and you put into your informed consent: If you take me to court, my court fee is $800 per hour, you can expect that the judge to say…

Katie Vernoy 12:11
Nope.

Curt Widhalm 12:12
Exactly. Hey, we’ve got your website pulled up right here. It says your normal fee is $200 per hour. That’s what you’re getting paid.

Katie Vernoy 12:19
Yeah. And I think you can from, from what I understand from the conversations we’ve had with Nicol, you can say you’re gonna pay me for my full day if you’re sending me to court, but that would be, you know, $1800 $2,000 rather than $15,000 for a day at court. Like you can’t push past the usual and customary.

Curt Widhalm 12:41
You can’t just bait clients into taking you to court, so that way you get paid for a full day, for one hour of work. But I sometimes see the justification in this argument, Well, I at least want to make clients pause before they take me to court. I, I get the sentiment, I validate the sentiment. This is also something where, if it’s your legally defined duty to do so, you’re not setting up necessarily the best, most trusting relationship with clients from the beginning. Hey, we haven’t started working yet, but I mistrust you enough in these future situations, and I’m going to try and milk you for every dime that you’re worth.

Katie Vernoy 13:27
For sure. And I think the the bigger piece is it’s clinical material, right? Whether they’re going to court, there’s, there’s so much there, and so to have this huge piece that is for your own benefit, and we have some episodes on you know whether something’s in the best interest of the client. So we’ll put that over at the show notes as well. But if it’s not discussed, if it’s not put into the clinical work, you’re missing a lot. If someone is in a situation where they need you to go to court to help them resolve the situation or get something sorted out, and you’re refusing, that’s in the relationship, and it potentially, as you know, Richard Leslie has said all through the this article, unethical, illegal, harmful, those types of things. And so when I get a client that is either already in litigation or is in a situation that could become that, I talk about the kind of the cost benefit analysis and how we might work and what the things are like, it needs to be part of the conversation so that you can actually do what you’re supposed to do. And if you’re hiding behind, well, I never go to court or whatever, or if you’re just refusing all clients who may have litigation at some point, that may be bias. It could be discrimination. We’ve got episodes on that those will go on the show notes as well, but it’s it’s something where life is messy, and being able to join our clients there and helping them with what we are required to do, I think, is really important.

Curt Widhalm 15:13
There’s also what you end up doing at the court that might determine what kind of witness you are, and whether or not you’re even entitled to some of these fees in the first place. So if, for example, you get called to a deposition to read your clinical notes, you’re not in the treating expert witness territory and giving…

Katie Vernoy 15:36
You’re a fact witness.

Curt Widhalm 15:37
You’re, you’re what’s called a percipient witness, and those fees are actually spelled out in statutes in California, and for that, you get paid $35 per day, plus travel expenses.

Katie Vernoy 15:50
Oh, my goodness.

Curt Widhalm 15:53
So you need to also know what kind of witness you are, because this also sets your expectations clearly. And we’ll point to an article in the show notes. This is by Ann Tran Lien over at CAMFT, who has a little bit more writing on this, but I want to dive into some of the other things that we’ve seen.

Katie Vernoy 16:15
We’ve well covered the court stuff.

Curt Widhalm 16:18
Yes, so I reached out to some of my therapist friends who are also in the law and ethics space, and did a little bit of a poll around, what are some things that you hear that are in people’s informed consents. And collectively, we came up with some of the following. And we’ll, we’ll do a little back and forth on this. This one starts pretty good and then ends pretty terribly. I reserve the right to adjust fees at any time, with or without notice.

Katie Vernoy 16:55
So, I hate to tell you, but my expenses have grown. And so today, instead of charging $100 it’s going to be $300.

Curt Widhalm 17:04
Yes.

Katie Vernoy 17:06
Oh, that is, I mean, that’s not legal. There’s all of the No Surprises Act. But I think there’s also, it’s bad business. The person’s going to be pretty pissed I came in with 100 bucks. You’re telling me I have more to give you. Oh, my god.

Curt Widhalm 17:26
Yeah, I think this wouldn’t now that you say the No Surprises Act, hopefully, has taken care of of that one quite a bit. I don’t think that we need to do a lot of back and forth on this. This one came up from our friends over at the sadly ended Very Bad Therapy podcast, but there was a therapist on there who had told someone, you’re not considered a client until we’ve been working together for 30 days.

Katie Vernoy 17:57
Hmm, that seems like a really just random amount of time. Is that 30 days is the assessment, and I am not your therapist while I’m assessing you? Like what are the possibilities as far as rationale for You’re not my client for the first 30 days I am treating you.

Curt Widhalm 18:21
I’m going to make the attempt to see the good intentions of something like this.

Katie Vernoy 18:26
Okay.

Curt Widhalm 18:28
But seeing if an actual therapeutic working alliance can be developed without necessarily having the responsibility for actually needing to do documentation paperwork, have responsibilities over someone.

Katie Vernoy 18:47
I don’t know if that’s I mean, I…

Curt Widhalm 18:49
I’m making attempts for somebody’s bad logic here. So…

Katie Vernoy 18:55
Well, I can see that 30 days, we’re going to get to know each other, and then we’ll lock in like I can see that, but not doing the paperwork, not committing to be your therapist for 30 days, it just feels weird.

Curt Widhalm 19:10
Seems like somebody who’s maybe also protecting themselves from working with severe mental illness or diagnostics that might show up that might be more work than what a therapist would want, and to give them an out to be able to say, You know what, I’m not feeling this because you’re above my pay grade, you’re… and that can be incredibly traumatic for clients in that end, but it’s also just dumb.

… 19:39
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Katie Vernoy 19:42
I think it seems to be trying to avoid the challenge of not abandoning a client.

Curt Widhalm 19:50
It does.

Katie Vernoy 19:53
So we’re even from the first phone call we’ve had. We have an episode on this too. I’ll try to find because I don’t remember what we called it, but when we have to refer someone out or we they initially call us like there is a responsibility that we have.

Curt Widhalm 20:08
Yeah, and there’s another article from CPH that will link in our show notes that talks about, when does your responsibility to a client actually become a client? If some person reaches out to you from a therapist directory, they find you, they leave a voicemail to you. You’re not responsible for them yet. I don’t know if that would you know, start some 30 day clock as far as you might end up being responsible. But it’s once you agree to services, that’s when they become your client. And it’s your responsibility to do a proper intake, to be able to know whether or not you’re going to be able to help someone, and that’s what your screening processes are for. That’s what a thorough assessment is about. That’s what ongoing consent is about, is being able to work together in a way that, all right, we’ve hit day 31 now we can develop that treatment plan.

Katie Vernoy 21:11
When we’re in a situation where we’re trying to assess: Is this client a good match for us? What do they need? Those types of things, we are still responsible for them. And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to comment that either the therapist or the client can say, hey, this isn’t working for me. It doesn’t take away the responsibility of the therapist, but saying that you’re not my client for 30 days feels unsettling and doesn’t allow for this development of a process, and then it doesn’t actually protect you from letting the client go. So, I think there’s a clinical conversation about we’re going to assess each other for the first 30 days, but legally and ethically, you’re their therapist once you start seeing them.

Curt Widhalm 22:02
Yes. All right, next one. This one comes from our good friend, Dr. Ben Caldwell, and we’ll link to his blog to talk about this in more depth on this, but having package pricing or prepayment discounts; give me a bunch of money up front and knock off 10% per session. Or if you agree to do 10 sessions, then it’s $50 off per session. But if you only do 9, then it’s my usual and customary rate. Here’s your punch card for a discount. In Ben’s article he talks about that this could, at worst, end up putting you into akin to an insurance company, because you’re offering a package pricing for a commitment to a number of sessions. It’s something that I imagine most people will read and say, Ben, I don’t agree with you, I’m going to do this anyway, and then potentially find themselves in extremely hot water when they become the poster child of the case that ends up getting put out for this. Because we don’t offer prepayments, discounts that’s becoming almost a creditor or making it to where if clients end up terminating earlier, not needing enough sessions that to meet the full discount price, that it puts you into a really awkward position of having to give clients money back or hold them to having to do more sessions to keep a discounted rate. It’s just better to have a straightforward fee for service on every single session.

Katie Vernoy 23:55
I agree with you, and I think that there’s probably ways to make this somewhat doable. I think I know some colleagues that have found ways to make it fit through all of the hoops of making it work. For me, the fear I have with those types of things are just what you said, that there’s a pressure to have clients do sessions that are not clinically necessary, and that becomes an ethical issue because you’re forcing sessions that don’t need to happen. So have clients pay per session. It’s just easier.

Curt Widhalm 24:34
I don’t prepay my doctor to have my appendix is removed in bulk, like, you know, and remove three appendixes. Get the fourth one free. The same thing for therapy. And, while it seems ridiculous, and hopefully someone out there is saying, you know, yeah, therapy is different than the medical model. A lot of healthcare law doesn’t really differentiate between the two, unless it’s specific to some of the business and professions codes, kinds of things. So.

Katie Vernoy 25:03
Well, and, and also, if you only get paid per session, it really helps for all the people who are trying to pull you into the scam where they have a family member that’s going to be in your area for 10 weeks. And so what’s your what’s your session fee? And I’ll pay it up front. And, and, oops, I accidentally paid something else. So can you refund me?

Curt Widhalm 25:24
I even feel weird sometimes when a family will pay a head for a session that’s going to be happening later in the week.Usually this is around one of their kids or something like that that I just I’ll put your credit card on file and I’ll charge it at the time of session, as it says in our paperwork. But I don’t want to be in the business of holding money and deducting it down. Next on the list is any attempts to have clients waive the therapist legal liability.

Katie Vernoy 26:00
Okay, give me an example of that.

Curt Widhalm 26:02
You agree to not sue me.

Katie Vernoy 26:09
I mean, there’s the mediation clauses that go into a lot of different contracts. Are we talking about that? Are we saying just nothing? You can’t do anything.

Curt Widhalm 26:16
So there seems to be two versions of this. One is the you waive any right to sue me clause, and this is something that you’ll see in Marathon registration forms, or you’ll see it in kind of large events, kinds of things. The other is, as you’re pointing out, mediation or arbitration clauses, that rather than going to court, you will go through an arbitrator, you’ll go through a mediator to be able to resolve this. More often than not, it seems like mediation tends to favor the professional in most of those situations, which is why a lot of businesses and healthcare providers would try to push someone to going to mediation, it tends to be more beneficial, whereas, if something ends up in front of a jury trial of normal citizens who aren’t either judges or other healthcare providers, that it becomes a lot more risky on determining what the outcome might be.

Katie Vernoy 27:22
So are you suggesting that arbitration or mediation clauses are not in patient’s or client’s best interest and they shouldn’t sign them?

Curt Widhalm 27:31
It’s something that I’m not sure how enforceable it is.

Katie Vernoy 27:38
Okay.

Curt Widhalm 27:39
This is again, magical thinking that we put into our informed consent. That is probably the title of the episode,

Katie Vernoy 27:48
Magical thinking that we put into our informed consent. Okay, noted, I’ll get that. Get right on that. But it seems to me that the therapists are trying to limit again, their court involvement, and it’s not necessarily illegal to put a arbitration clause in. It may be just, you know, not worthless, not worth it not not valuable to what you think it is. It’s not doing what you think it’s doing.

Curt Widhalm 28:19
Yes, all right, I saved my last and favorite one.

Katie Vernoy 28:24
All right, all right, here we go.

Curt Widhalm 28:28
If you are traveling out of state, you agree that any services that I provide while you are traveling are considered coaching and not therapy.

Katie Vernoy 28:37
Somebody actually put that in writing?

Curt Widhalm 28:42
Yes, and I’m sure that there’s more than one somebody.

Katie Vernoy 28:47
Oh, my goodness. I don’t even know how to respond to that. That’s so blatantly illegal. Like this is the thing that we’re talking about, that if a client signs it, they are signing something that’s illegal, right?

Curt Widhalm 29:05
Yes, you you travel across this jurisdictional boundary, and it’s some sort of portal to change the language of what we’re doing, and you’re just going to pre agree to this ahead of time, that once you’re on the other side…

Katie Vernoy 29:18
And pre-agree to the the dual relationship to me, breaking the law, you’re going to agree to all those things so I’m safe.

Curt Widhalm 29:25
Which also brings to the question is, what you’re doing actually coaching when they are in the state? Because if it’s not fundamentally different, there’s some pretty big differences between therapy and coaching.

Katie Vernoy 29:39
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 29:40
But making people agree to this that, hey, if you’re traveling, I don’t want to do the extra work of trying to get you, know, very time limited practicing privileges in another state. I don’t want to have to refer you out. I’m just going to write down that it’s coaching-ish.

Katie Vernoy 30:02
And do that as a blanket policy, not actually look at what am I, what are my clients needs in this other jurisdiction?

Curt Widhalm 30:09
Yes.

Katie Vernoy 30:10
We’re just gonna keep going as we’re going, but it can be called coaching. So I’m I’m above the law.

Curt Widhalm 30:16
It absolves me of any having to know what laws are in the other states as well.

Katie Vernoy 30:24
Yes, yeah. I just listening to all of these. It just blows my mind, because I understand for the most part the rationale behind putting these things in an informed consent, but I really like that title for the episode. It’s magical thinking. It’s not, it’s not this Get Out of Jail Free card. It’s really, isn’t.

Curt Widhalm 30:51
I think more than ever, I want people to join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, and maybe we created a sticky like…

Katie Vernoy 31:01
Oh, post.

Curt Widhalm 31:03
…pin a post. That is, what are some of the other magical thinking informed consent language that you’ve seen? Because I think that this would be a fascinating opportunity for the community to build on the conversation for this episode.

Katie Vernoy 31:17
Oh, for sure, for sure. We’ll have to do that.

Curt Widhalm 31:19
So join the Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, and follow us on our social media. Check out the show notes over at mtsgpodcast com, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.

… 31:31
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