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When Health Consulting Businesses are Legally Responsible
Being a source of advice for our wellbeing and well-being is one thing the internet is notorious for.
There is someone with a website that advises us what to do to lose weight, slow down ageing, or handle our diseases everywhere we turn.
We’re all doing it. We don’t feel good, so we type our symptoms into “Dr. Google” and voila, thousands of results telling us that we have anything from a common cold to living for 6 months. We’ll then send our results to our doctor and tell him what we’ve got.
Sadly, health care professionals, physicians, nurses, dieticians and nutritionists all have a constant struggle with misinformation provided on the internet.
You may want to share this knowledge with the world if you are a writer and have any experience with health-related problems.
Or, you might be a specialist with some education on certain topics related to health and want to use that data to improve your online business.
Either way, when it comes to delivering health and wellness website data and guidance to the masses, you have to be very cautious to comply with the laws.
Legal Responsibilities for Providing Health-Related Advice
So, when presenting health-related information on a website, what are the legal problems for health consulting and coaching companies?
In recent years, there have been more than a few lawsuits arising from posting health and diet tips with others on the internet.
In a recent North Carolina litigation, a writer altered his life and had experience using the Paleo diet to treat his Type 1 diabetes. He blogged about his efforts and he took his blogging a step further when popular and started posting his meal plans and workout regimes.
Eventually, he started offering one on one sessions to educate his readers for a fee on the methods of his experience.
There is a misdemeanour statute in North Carolina that makes it illegal to practise dietetics or nutrition without a licence. This blogger has been charged with violating this law, and he is now threatened with jail by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition.
Research All Governing Bodies’ Rules & Regulations
You must ensure that you obey all the rules while providing health and wellness information online.
What regulatory body has distinct rules about what data you can and can not advise the public about their health.
Both Canada and the United States have identical federal rules, and each province and state also has different laws of their own.
If you are going to provide data, then you need to look up certain laws based on where you live and where you do business from. And you then have to understand the demographic you are approaching in order to take it even a step further.
If you have data on your health-related page, a reasonable rule to follow is to ask yourself whether you are specific to a specific personal health situation. With his personal encounters with the Paleo diet, the blogger in the North Carolina lawsuit was doing OK.
His recommendations for fitness regimes or offering his personal diet plans on his health and wellness website may also have been OK with the law, but he was beyond sharing his personal knowledge and fell into the field of providing medical expertise in an environment where he was not legally certified to participate as soon as he began advising individuals and providing advice.
Remember, it is one thing to give your opinion on a health-related topic or to tell about your own experience, but if you pretend to be an expert on something on your health and nutrition page, the boards responsible for regulating public education on the topic and dealing with legal issues will keep you accountable.
If you are going to have accurate health details, you must not in any way assert or pose as something that you are not.
You need to be very specific about what your education and knowledge are if you hand out health or wellness advice, and also be very vigilant about the legal issues surrounding any advice you offer.
This is where working with a professional web development company will help lead you in the right direction and ensure that when running your business, you do not post something that could cause you legal problems. It would also be very smart to consult a lawyer who is well versed in these matters.
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