The Center for Health and Wellness Law, LLC

The Center for Health and Wellness Law, LLC is the “go-to” law firm for the health and wellness industries.  The Center provides legal advice, resources, trainings and advocacy to help the health and wellness industries operate in a compliant and optimal manner, which ultimately benefits patients and improves population health.  The Center is a boutique law firm that understands, appreciates and shares in the goals of the health and wellness industries and the professionals who work within them.

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Your massage therapy business needs to have massage liability waivers in place before you do any work on clients. This can help protect you or any massage therapists you employ if your client subsequently suffers an injury due to their massage therapy session.

However, it is important to ensure that your massage liability waivers are written in a way that does not invalidate the waiver, as this could leave your massage therapists and business open for potential litigation.

Here
Continue Reading Massage Liability Waivers: What You Need to Know

This article aims to promote incorporating Advance Care Planning (ACP) into health promotion work. ACP can serve as a tool and framework to engage in broader discussions about an individual’s social and structural drivers of health. By looking beyond individual behavior and starting the ACP discussion, health promotion professionals can tackle SDOH thereby making health promotion efforts more effective.
Keep reading in the American Journal of Health Promotion here.
 
The post Advance Care Planning is Critical to
Continue Reading Advance Care Planning is Critical to Overall Wellbeing

If you are a health provider or wellness professional, you may wonder whether and how you can use social media influencers and other experts who might be willing to give testimonials about your wellness services or products. What are the legal guidelines you should follow when engaging with influencers?
Social media posts should be treated the same as other advertising or health claims. In other words, they information should be truthful and not misleading, and any claims regarding how
Continue Reading How Can Wellness Providers Legally Use Influencers to Promote their Products and Services?

A lot of our clients specialize in the mental health space. Some practice as licensed psychologists, social workers or professional counselors, while others are unlicensed emotional wellness, mental health and wellbeing coaches. The main difference between those two groups is that one group (the licensed group) are regulated by state licensing boards. The second group (the coaching group) are not regulated by state licensing boards, at least not directly.
Coaching in the mental health and emotional wellness space can
Continue Reading What is the Difference Between Practicing Psychology and Practicing Mental Health Coaching?

In December 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a document entitled Health Products Compliance Guidance. Any wellness professional, whether you are a health coach, functional medicine provider, integrative health provider, holistic health provider, naturopathic doctor, chiropractor, or wellness business owner, should understand the FTC guidance. This is particularly true for those wellness providers who sell products such as dietary supplements, essential oils, diet plans, certain foods, or other products that can provide health benefits.
It should be
Continue Reading Wellness Professionals Should Be Familiar with the Federal Trade Commission Health Products Compliance Guidance

Craniosacral therapy can be a great addition to your massage therapy business. With more and more clients looking for relief for depression, infections, migraines, anxiety, joint stiffness, and other medical conditions, including craniosacral therapy as part of your massage therapy services could improve your clients’ health and boost your business.
However, before you begin offering craniosacral therapy, it is important to understand the licensing requirements. If you do not remain in compliance with your state laws, your business could
Continue Reading Do You Need a License to Practice Craniosacral Therapy?

The way you structure your business as a personal trainer or other wellness professional could be one of the most important decisions you make.

Like many in your position, you may have narrowed your options down to an S Corporation or an LLC. However, you can’t just make this decision blindly — each of these have their pros and cons.

We’re going to explore those pros and cons in this article.

Still struggling to decide between an LLC and
Continue Reading LLC or S Corp for Personal Trainer or Wellness Professional? Pros and Cons

Acupuncture is one of the most popular and sought-after types of alternative medicine. And why wouldn’t it be? The potential benefits of acupuncture are incredible — this form of medicine has been in use for thousands of years.
As someone who appreciates this health and wellness practice, you may be interested in expanding your career and offering services as an acupuncturist.
But before you move forward, consider the legal requirements. For example, do you need a license to be
Continue Reading Do You Need a License to Be an Acupuncturist?

Ever heard this one before?
“I saw a Facebook ad for a supplement that’s supposed to be great for weight loss. Should I try it?”
Most health coaches hear this from a client at some point. It’s such a common question that many health coaches even find themselves thinking about selling the supplements to clients as part of their business.
But can you offer dietary supplements to your clients? Can you even recommend them?
The answer is complicated but
Continue Reading Should Health Coaches Offer Dietary Supplements to Clients?

Are you a health coach or wellness provider wondering if you can, or even should, bill health insurance companies for your services? Perhaps you have started your wellness practice or your virtual holistic health practice and some of your clients are asking if you take insurance. Or perhaps you are wondering if it is a good idea to take insurance.
Certainly health insurance offers another revenue stream, particularly from those clients who may not be able to afford to
Continue Reading Can Health Coaches or Wellness Practitioners Bill Insurance?

A recent article in Forbes asked whether it is time to reconsider Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). The article’s author is the founder of an employee benefits solution and points out that EAPs are significantly underutilized and undervalued by employees. As a result of this lack of appreciation and use for EAPs, the author argues that more personalized, specialized services would better serve employees, rather than the typical “one size fits all” approach of EAPs.

The author is correct that
Continue Reading No, EAPs are not Dead, they just need a Re-Brand

As a lawyer who practices in both the health care and wellness worlds, I have the advantage of witnessing strategies to try to improve health outcomes in both worlds. One issue that is dominating the health care policy literature is implementing strategies to address Social Determinants of Health (“SDOH”). SDOH includes issues like:

  • family relationships,
  • housing
  • education levels
  • income and employment concerns,
  • cultural values
  • legal status (such as immigration, criminal or credit history status)

These issues can have an
Continue Reading Tackling the Social Determinants of Health through Wellness-Legal Partnerships

Many health and wellness coaches obtain free legal templates through their coaching certification or training programs. These templates might include services agreements, waiver or disclaimer documents, and even privacy policies or other essential legal documents for a compliant coaching practice. The essential question about these free templates is whether they are worth using? Are the templates good enough for a health coaching startup business?
Lawyers Don’t Like Them
There are a number of articles on this topic. And if
Continue Reading Are Free Legal Templates for Health and Wellness Coaches a Good Idea?

That is a question I hear from a lot of health and wellness practitioners. The answer to whether you can use a telehealth platform to practice your craft on a national, or even international basis, depends on whether you are acting under a state-issued license.

Licensed Health Care Providers

If you are practicing under a state-issued license, such as a medical doctor, nurse, psychologist, physical therapist, chiropractor or naturopathic doctor, for example, then you must be licensed in each
Continue Reading Can I Practice Telemedicine Nationally?

As predicted by our law firm, the word is getting out that workplace wellness programs are a hot target for employment-based lawsuits. In the past week, legal activity in two separate workplace wellness programs located in Illinois has ramped up. This blog will give a summary of both pending cases.
AARP v. Austin Industries
The AARP, the same organization that was behind the Yale University lawsuit, filed a charge with the EEOC on behalf of employees of Austin
Continue Reading Two for 2022: Two More Wellness Incentive Lawsuits!

A lot of our clients specialize in the mental health space. Some practice as licensed psychologists, social workers or professional counselors, while others are unlicensed emotional wellness, mental health and wellbeing coaches. The main difference between those two groups is that one group (the licensed group) are regulated by state licensing boards. The second group (the coaching group) are not regulated by state licensing boards, at least not directly.

Coaching in the mental health and emotional wellness space can
Continue Reading What is a Mental Health and Wellbeing Coach?