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I wanted to get into health to just help people and to make a difference in people’s lives. But as I have learned over the last 10 years of being a registered dietitian – there are a lot of things that can be a bit tricky to navigate!

Especially anything legal – it’s one of those things that we need someone to be answering our questions about.

Today we have an amazing guest, my lawyer Glenford Jameson and together we’re giving you a better understanding of some of the legal questions that you need to ask – and some of the things to think about in the legality of having an online program in your practice, and this world of teaching online.

Here’s what we covered:

• What legal aspects to consider before creating an online health program (Glenford does an amazing job of breaking this down!)
• How to know if you can have clients from outside of your state/province (it depends!)
• Do regulated health professionals need a lawyer? (I’ve worked with Glenford since early in my business!)
• The importance of creating Terms & Conditions, Disclaimers, etc (and how they are there to protect you!)
• What to consider when you’re offering free content online (in addition to disclaimers!)

We help you understand what you need to think about, action steps to take, questions that need to be asked as you consider adding an online program to your practice to reach and support more people online.

About Glenford

Glenford’s practice is focused on corporate-commercial and administrative-regulatory law in the business context, where he advises organizations on structure and organization, corporate governance, regulatory requirements, and compliance issues. In his practice, he leverages his significant legal experience in the food sector for entities ranging from start-ups to multinationals that encounter a high degree of regulation, or that seek to challenge regulatory regimes under which food is produced and sold in Canada.

You can find him online here: food.gsjameson.com or on Instagram: @gsjameson

If you enjoyed this podcast, you may enjoy these 3 other podcast episodes about other investments to consider for your business:

• • Ep. 09 Do I Need More Training?
  • Ep. 13 Do I Need a Coach?
  • Ep. 15 Investing in Your Business

Prefer reading? Here’s the transcript below

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Stephanie: If someone could have told me that becoming a registered health professional was a little more complicated than I thought it was, it might have been helpful when I first started out. I mean, I wanted to be a registered dietitian. I wanted to get into health to just help people and to make a difference in people’s lives. But as I have learned over the last…oh, gosh I can’t remember… 10 years of being a registered health professional – I am a registered dietitian – there are a lot of things that can be a bit tricky to navigate.

So today’s podcast is dedicated to you better understanding some of the legal questions that you need to ask. As well as some of the things to think about in the legality of having an online program in your practice, and just this world of teaching online, as we have been entering into it for the last few years. I’m excited to share with you my lawyer who has been working with me…I think now for over six years, Glenford Jameson is here with me today. Thanks so much for being here Glen.

Glenford: I’m super excited to be part of this. It’s been a lot of fun watching the podcast take off.

Stephanie: Yeah, oh my gosh, and we have had so many ridiculous conversations over the years. So I appreciate Glen so much. And I want you all to know that he’s been vetted. I vetted him for years. He’s gone through so many different situations with me, because remember I have built my own practice in IBS and have had an online program in IBS for years now. And that program is even grown and scaled to be supporting more people. So I’m right in here with you.

I have been with Glen for years, just navigating the legal system and what we can do in order to help all of these people. Because that’s the point – more impact and better efficient healthcare. Glenford is…I am going to let him introduce himself in a second…but just so you know, he is another one of my TLP, The Leveraged Practice advisors. So I have curated a group of amazing experts to advise our members and our clients in The Leveraged Practice. And offer ongoing workshops and trainings for my members, so that they continue to grow their practice, grow their online program and reach more people.

Legal is one of those things that we need someone to be answering our questions about. So that’s why Glen’s here and why and how he fits into The Leveraged Practice as well. And like I said, he is a pretty smart guy. So Glenford thanks so much for being here. And will you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Glenford: Yeah, for sure. Well, first, I’m blushing. That’s a very kind intro. It’s been wonderful working together with you over the years because you ask really hard questions. I’m a lawyer. My practice is primarily in the corporate commercial space and then in the regulatory space. Generally speaking, I often work or primarily work in the food sector, because it’s a real nexus of those two issues.

Our food system is highly regulated. We deal with very aggressive regulators. There are clear rules over how you can advertise and market products, and access the market, and deal with health consequences, and that sort of thing.

In the corporate commercial side, organizing yourself from a legal perspective is really important in terms of dealing with risks, liabilities and creating a platform to grow. The clients I work with the most are usually ones who are pressing against an existing regulatory regime that doesn’t fit what they’re trying to do. I’m trying to think creatively about ways to approach those problems.

So in Stephanie’s context, your context, this is a perfect example, right? As a dietitian, or as anyone who’s covered under regulated health professions, most of these acts in Ontario, certainly in Canada, generally a lot of them went through some renewal in the 1990s. And paid no sort of thought to what an online universe or course or module might look like, or how they interact with the patient.

In my professional space, certainly working with regulated health professionals is a big piece of that. And yeah, thinking through these sorts of problems are a lot of fun. I teach at Michigan State’s College of Law a course a year, and I got my hands in a few other things related to food and law and regulation. Yeah and I’m just thrilled to be here.

Stephanie: Glenford is actually locally in Toronto, Ontario. I’m actually just about an hour, although we don’t get to see each other a lot in person. But we’re about an hour apart physically. So we are both in Ontario, Canada.

So I know we have listeners from all over the globe listening. Your situation, of course, in your state or province, in your country is going to be a little bit different. We don’t take these conversations today and any conversations we have with Glenford and saying this is exactly what you’re going to do.

What we want to do in this podcast is sit with Glenford and understand what we need to consider, action steps we can take, questions we need to ask, and how we might be able to achieve what we want to achieve in growing our practices and in helping people online.

So please know that although we are located in Ontario, both of us and we are located in Canada, you will still takeaway from this episode some really interesting things to consider – and some great advice moving forward as you think about how as a health practitioner, you’re going to help people online in health.

The Legal Aspects Health Professionals Need to Consider Before Running an Online Health Program

 

So my first question for you Glenford is like the most vague, broadest question in the entire world. And it’s really just opening up to you to help us start to understand a few things. So what do you think the biggest things that health professionals should think about and consider when we’re first thinking about running an online program?

So this is that question for those of you who are health practitioners, clinicians, you want to run an online program. Glenford, we don’t even know what questions to ask, you know. Like, how do I even do this thing? So what would be a starting point that you would say of things to consider?

Glenford: Right. So this is an important question. Stephanie as you said, my perspective is always going to be from Ontario primarily, and from Canada generally. This relates to our regulatory framework in Canada, which would be a little bit different than the United States or in Europe. We’re different, and different rules apply.

Any regulated health professional, is going to be highly regulated in several different ways. In terms of how they interact with patients and offer treatment, no question, keep records. These are obvious things, but also in terms of corporate organization – in their ability to operate a regular Corporation, or LLC versus a professional Corporation. They’ll be limitations on who can be a shareholder and how a corporation is covered.

So even in terms of your base business organization, there are a different set of rules that apply to you, if you are a doctor or a dentist or a dietitian or a pharmacist, or any of these regulated health professionals. That’s our starting point.

When you’re looking at a problem and you’re thinking about ways that different people have answered that in their course of creating a business, it’s important to remember that you are not just a member of the public who’s trying to accomplish something. You’re truly something special if you are a regulated health professional, and there’s some legislation, and a series of rules, and a college and an enforcement body, and a public interest that informs how you everything that you do. So that makes things a little bit complicated.

Now, I mean, so Stephanie, because you’re a dietitian, we use dietetics as an example. But the practice of dietetics is unbelievably broadly defined under the Act. So I believe it’s something to the effect of assessment, nutrition and the conditions and treatment and prevention of nutrition related disorders, by nutritional needs, right? So determining or affecting people’s conditions by feeding them basically. It’s essentially the broadest definition of dietetics you could ever come up with.

Stephanie: It’s ridiculous. It’s basically food and like health, it’s so random. We have dug into this so many times. So I love that we’re using dietetics as an example. It’s like the craziest one.

Glenford: It’s just useful to get to the core of it for you. But we think about that, and you think about that definition and you wonder, like how many people are practicing dietetics in any context without being a regulated health professional, right? So anytime you go to the gym and you talk about what you’re eating, and your health and your energy levels. Boom, someone’s contravening the act and could be subject to an offense under that act, and by the college.

I mean in a lot of ways that you might read information about dietary supplements. Or go into a shop where you pick out your whey or your workout supplements. Or you go to buy vitamins. So these sorts of things. If you’re being informed by a salesperson it’s really under this definition that’s super broad, like you’re probably engaging with someone who’s practicing dietetics.

Stephanie: It’s so interesting to think about it like that, Glen. I want us to just like pause on that for a second, because that’s the first mind blowing part. I personally when I was in high school worked at Nutrition House in a mall, like a nutrition supplement store. We gave all kinds of nutrition advice. We had a giant textbook, and we would look up conditions and be like, “Oh, here’s what you should eat and here’s the pills you should take that you should buy from our store.” Like 20 years ago. It’s nuts. So I just need to just complain for a second, because it’s the starting point of how challenging this can be. So, please go on.

Glenford: So we understand why there’s an act and why this is regulated. But when there is a definition that covers essentially anyone who’s talking about health and corrective measures through what you eat, we’re talking about every blogger in any health website that you’ve ever come across. Whether they have gone to school for this sort of thing or ever practiced. I mean, it’s just wildly broad. So that’s frustrating.

Absolutely, absolutely. Because you look at sort of underlying the principle of why a dietitian is regulated in the first place. It’s about the public interest, right? It’s really about ensuring that people are getting health information in a proper way. There’s a code of interacting with patients. There’s a very clear obligation of confidentiality and a way of handling patient records. There’s this public interest component – that’s super important.

So if that’s the case, then how do we as a series of regular members – who are less concerned about those blood samples or those more diagnostic procedures – how do we leave that and head into a more deliverable style of dietetics? And that’s a really hard question to answer.

Because if you speak with your college, all of their advice will relate to the traditional medical facility. Where a patient comes into your office, you take her blood, you see what she’s eating, you chat with her and see how she’s doing from a health perspective. It’s a very intimate, one-on-one classical medical scenario. And so the information from colleges, when it comes to how to engage with the patient, typically pushes you to think through what that looks like online. Often it doesn’t jive and so that’s very frustrating.

Let’s flip it and go well, who’s a patient then? To practice dietetics, it doesn’t mean you have to have patients. But a patient is someone, it’s a little narrower, but it’s someone who’s consented to receiving a health care service by a dietitian. It is where the dietitian has received payment or charged for entering into business with an individual or behalf of an individual. So it’s like anytime there’s a transactional context to it, that also becomes a patient. There are a series of obligations on that side, too.

So on paper, we’ve got a super broad definition of who a regulated health professional is, or dietitian is and then who a potential patient is. But the reality is, our colleges aren’t very good at catching all of this stuff obviously, right? Because Stephanie was working at Nutrition House when she was 17. Because you can walk into a gym and receive tons of unsolicited nutritional advice. We know with this stuff that goes on. It makes it very frustrating for a regulated dietitian, who is subject to a series of rules particularly on how they can engage with clients or patients and how they are able to advise them. It makes it really challenging to get to a practical place, particularly in the online space, right?

If you get to what really is at stake in the dietetic example, dietitians do have some very special powers, right? So you’re allowed to take blood samples. That’s something that no one else is able to do. I think you’re allowed to issue certain prescriptions for diagnostic procedures and for treatments, for example. And typically, dietitians are built into our health institutions, right. So hospitals and that sort of thing.

When we think of the substance and why we regulate this from the public interest. One is an informational piece that we’ve done a terrible job generally of policing. But the other is a very specific area that we have done a much better job of policing. That’s where things are more invasive from a health perspective. So again, sending someone to get scans, to get blood tests, and taking blood samples. That’s stuff we really care about.

I’m not speaking of the CEO of the College of Dietitians of Ontario, but generally speaking, all professional colleges and regulatory bodies. This includes the Law Society who I’m subject to because in the same way, I’m not a regulated health professional, but I’m a regulated professional and I’m a lawyer. We’ve got the Solicitors Act and we’ve got the Law Society, which effectively does the same thing.

Most of these institutional bodies have really come into the 21st century of online practice kicking and screaming. Or in their view, I’m sure it’s more of a cautious manner and out of concern from the public interest, as we switch from something that’s very authentic and personal to something that’s less personal and less authentic in a traditional patient-doctor setting or solicitor-client setting. And so what we’re doing is essentially blowing their minds and blowing up a model of service delivery.

Can a Regulated Health Professional Offer an Online Health Program?

Stephanie: The biggest question that people have is, “Can I do this?” I know that we can get into this for a little bit. Iike, “Can I as a regulated professional…” – specifically regulated health professional, but it would be interesting to cross to anyone who’s regulated like legal and financial and lots of different areas, but, “Can I as a regulated health professional – can I offer online education?”

Glenford: And the short answer I think Stephanie would generally be, yes you can. But it’s subject to some limitations. A classic example is one of jurisdiction. So as a lawyer, I’m qualified to practice law in the province of Ontario and to deal with Canadian law. But historically, I wouldn’t have been able to practice in British Columbia, for example, even though most of our laws follow the same jurisprudence and our courts take note of their cases, and vice versa. We’re all subject to the same Supreme Court of Canada jurisdiction or jurisprudence rather.

Maybe five years ago, the law societies came together and they said, “Hey look, we should create a reciprocal arrangement, wherein if someone is doing less than 10% of their practice in Alberta with their base in Ontario or vice versa, we really shouldn’t stand in their way. And so there’s a very easy process for lawyers to suddenly give advice in Alberta, or in British Columbia, or Nova Scotia or wherever. Essentially to hop jurisdictional boundaries. Whereas for all of the 20th century and before that, we couldn’t do that. The health professionals, the regulations that I’ve seen, don’t allow for that.

Stephanie: No, that sounds amazing. How do we get that? How do we get them to do that? Because that sounds exactly what all of us want to do. Is to not have to let go of our training or our credentials in order to help other people and to follow the rules of our colleges. But, you know, how did that come to be? Or how, I don’t even know, how would we even go about doing that?

Glenford: A phenomenal question and a complex one. But ultimately what we’ve seen in Canada in our legal market is a concentration of expertise in a few key areas. And so often a concern is being able to give people in remote areas or areas that don’t have certain legal expertise, access to top professionals. And if a barrier was jurisdictionally related, then we were not acting in the public interest.

Stephanie: That’s exactly it. That’s the exact point of healthcare is that we do specialize, especially in dietetics but in every single profession, where we are seeing that more as we see more and more businesses develop, that we are specializing. I’m a good example. Like, I was one of the first ones in Canada to specialize. All I did was IBS. All I did was that GI and so people came to me from all over. It’s almost like you don’t even need to, hunt or look for clients anymore. They are looking for people who are specialized and doing a great job in a specific area. So I think we have that. Is the pathway that we as a profession need to get together, and each profession needs to do this to make a case to the colleges as a whole?

Glenford: So that’s the other half of it. So the first is making that sort of argument that this is in the public interest to broaden this up, right? And then the second is the members. Obviously, there’s a tremendous business case as well, if you’re as specialized as Stephanie is, as you are in dealing with IBS and GI issues.

If someone is carrying those issues and they are in…I don’t know, this will offend someone who’s in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. But if you’re in Weyburn, Saskatchewan which is a small town, your dietitian – if there is one there, is not going to have that expertise. They’ll have access to certain documents that will probably come from you. But we’re depriving that person of top quality healthcare. And on the flip side, we’re depriving dietitians who are specialized to deal with very specific problems, and the opportunity to take care of potential patients that are outside of their province.

So how do we change this? This is a really big question, because it involves a bunch of different players from both a political and a regulatory perspective. But it can be done. So there weren’t any specific changes to the lawyers’ overarching legislation. This was the regulator driven. The regulators essentially came to each other, and negotiated something that was sufficiently protectionist, so that I couldn’t – as a lawyer in Ontario – do 90% of my business in British Columbia. That was not acceptable.

But they came to a number on that. Once you cross over that threshold, then you have to start paying dues, and you have to become a member of British Columbia’s Law Society. There’s a negotiation and an agreement they came to being after, say, five years of negotiation. Now countrywide, we’re able to do this, including in Quebec, which is remarkable because they have different law system. So federal issues that come up in Quebec, the common-law lawyers can work there as well.

So the main piece, I think, is that this was member-driven change, and identifying actions that were not in the public interest being taken by by our regulators. So what does that mean, if you’re a dietitian? Or if you’re a doctor or a dentist, or any number of our health professionals? It means a few things.

One, really making it clear to your regulators that this is becoming a burden. And this is out of step with how professional services are being delivered in 2019 is I think really important, right? Colleges, generally speaking are at first change, because they’re good at regulating what the current state is, or where we were five years ago, let’s say. And so that change interrupts and it interferes with how they’re able to regulate their members.

The other piece, it could be legislation driven. So possibly dealing with your MPP or your MLA and discussing these issues can be very helpful.

The other piece would be a strength in numbers process. So getting together as a group, and like what you’re doing Stephanie is really great, because you’re getting people who have an interest in performing professional services on an online context together so they can create a dialogue. They can think through what it might look like to change these colleges.

As opposed to being one person who goes up to the steps of their respective college and they say, “Hey, look, you got to change these rules.” All of a sudden, your group of 10 or 50, or 100, or 500, or 1000 or when you’re 20% of the membership of a college, it’s really hard to ignore you. So I’m optimistic that these are changes that we’ll see. There is a roadmap that is set out, which is great. But this stuff does take time. Colleges typically act in a fairly glacial manner.

Can Regulated Health Professionals Have Clients From Outside of Their Province/State?

Stephanie: So we have to start, we have to start somewhere. So let’s back up, we know where we need to go. We kind of went there first. What do we do right now? So are we saying Glen that as a regulated health professional, you can’t actually take clients into your online program outside of your own state or province?

Glenford: It depends on your state of province. But we’ve got this definition of what it means to practice dietetics in Ontario and that’s our example. So ultimately, this depends on your state, or your provincial college and legislation that governs them. We’ll use Ontario as the example.

If you are a practitioner in California, or Venezuela, or Japan, or British Columbia, and you come to Ontario, and if you are assessing nutrition, if you are providing for the treatment and prevention of nutritional disorder by nutritional means, then in the college’s eyes, you’re not a member of the College of Dietitians of Ontario. You may be a member of somewhere else, and that’s fine and well, but it doesn’t qualify you in Ontario to provide that kind of advice.

So suddenly you’re operating in the same space as the Jim Grow, who’s advising you on how to do that fat cut or who knows, right? Like that sort of gray market group of folks who aren’t registered dietitians. In short, I believe that’s an offense, not a major one, a provincial one, but you’re breaking rules. It’s possible that could have an effect on your home college as well.

So there are concerns depending on how your college is set up about practicing in a variety of areas. So a potential workaround would simply be to sign up for all colleges. But that’s not practical. It’s expensive and each college has its own regulatory requirements, and goes through a process where they go through your qualifications and ensure that you’re on the same page. They all have their own continuing education requirements. So it’s not really practical, particularly when you get into markets like United States where there are 50 different bodies that you need to comply with. Although in the US, I do believe that there’s a unified system. So maybe 20 or 25 states have signed up to recognize each other’s regulated health professionals.

Stephanie: Well, I think it comes down to the different professions as well, which is interesting. I can speak from my own personal experience in dietetics only, right. Each profession has to know their own rules and the way it works. But I know that credits and renewals and stuff like that happens at the national level for dietetics. I do know Glenford that there’s states that the title isn’t governed at all. So again, I’m not a lawyer, but the questions come out from the US where if there is no governing of the title, dietitian or nutritionist or whatever, you can just practice and take clients from that state, right? Again, it depends on the country that you’re in as well, right? Each country is different, but in a little bit of knowledge about the US is that even state to state the rules differ so much, even just the governing of the title.

Glenford: Right, right. Ultimately, the short answer is you should talk to a lawyer about this. But it is really hard. I mean, a great example of how this can all come together is in securities law. So in securities law, each province has its own regulator. But if you live in Alberta, and you want to buy shares that are traded, or that exist in Ontario, you’re able to do that and that company can sell the shares to you.

In those instances, you’re governed by both bars. So by the Upper Securities Commission, as well as the Ontario one. And that’s forced those regulatory bodies to create National Instruments where everything is unified, and similar. So you’re facing the same obligations and the issuer isn’t required to be a member of the Alberta Securities Commission, even though they’re governed by some of those protective rules.

There are ways forward. They don’t really exist in the health professions. Because again, we’re just slowly moving away from this 1990 style approach of delivery of these pieces. But we have lots of roadmaps to choose from in terms of how to move forward.

Stephanie: Well, it sounds like you’re giving us a plan and some action and that it does need to happen in numbers. That we do collectively need to get together and within our profession, talk to colleges and work on something. And we know that that will take time.

For those right now who have a health practice who want to create an online program for their practice and help more people. What advice can we give them? Is it for now, for today, launch your online program and only deliver it to clients who are within your state or province? Or is it Glenford, like coming back down to the definition of what practicing your trade is? And does something like a self study program, where it’s really like a book on the internet, something like that help us help more people, because we’re not actually providing that one to one guidance? Are there things people can do today to create that online program and offer it that we could provide them with?

Glenford: Right, so I think again the major piece is to contemplate whether you are or not practicing, right? So that’s the first question. Does this whole framework apply to you? Because if it doesn’t apply to you, then that’s great and you can ignore these rules. You can be a registered dietitian who isn’t providing dietetic services.

Stephanie: Nothing is stopping you from being a registered dietitian, or psychotherapist or psychologist or physician or whatever it is that you are, but also having another job. If you were a personal trainer. If you were, you know, working at Nutrition House, whatever you’re doing.

Glenford: Absolutely, absolutely. Right. Like I mean, I’m sure Dr. Phil is a member of a college somewhere. But when he’s on his TV show, I don’t think it applies. I think he’s doing the best he can and no one’s a patient and no one’s going through your client intake forms, those sorts of things.

What Legal Aspects Are There For Free Online Content?

 

Stephanie: Yeah. Which I actually have a question about talking about Dr. Phil is this kind of thing, where we do have YouTube channels. We do have videos on Facebook. We’re providing this information Glenford in a paid program, but we’ve been providing it for free on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook for years. And so is that governed the same way is if you are a registered professional even it’s free? Where you’re doing a one hour presentation, or half hour presentation or two minute video, and you’re providing that advice? Do we need to consider that as well? With those means, we’re just getting messier now. Because how do we even govern? Who sees a Facebook Live video?

Glenford: These are terrific points and so I would agree it’s a bunch of things. The first is going to that question of who is a patient, right? Because you need to be transactional in nature or not. Maybe in your area it does or doesn’t? Are you practicing dietetics in that context? If you’re just throwing out information and it’s not reflective of a patient situation, or of their particular disorder and their circumstances, are you practicing dietetics? That’s a good question. I don’t think that we still have an answer to that. I’m sure there are shades of it.

The lawyer’s answer is going to be, “You probably are, maybe you’re not. Either way, you have got to put a bunch of disclaimers on everything to be very clear that you’re not providing dietetic advice.” If you’re putting it out into the world, which is stuff that we see all the time. These are hard questions to answer in the abstract, because they are highly detailed. Like the legal assessment and the interpretation of whether or not you’re delivering a dietetics program or if someone is a patient is really hard.

Like I take your point. If you write the South Beach diet or you write some nutritional Bible, is that practicing dietetics? So someone goes into a bookstore and buys it, I would say probably not. I don’t think a college would say that it’s actually dietetics either.

So is delivering something online any different? I assure you the authors of every dietetics text that’s been sold, they aren’t members of all the colleges.

So in working through those sort of thought processes and thinking through how dynamic and reflective your programs are, maybe you get to a different answer. Maybe you’re writing a dietetics program, or secondary program, who knows.

But I would say it’s a very sensitive area, because the costs of running afoul of your regulator are significant, right? So losing your accreditation could be really harsh. Having to go in front of the college’s tribunal, or their discipline committee is not a pleasant experience. Having to sort of open your …what’s the phrase?..to go open kimono with your regulator. They can see everything that you do and how you do it. Not a pleasant experience. So these are things that you want to avoid.

Often, there are folks who want to do an act first, ask for forgiveness sort of approach and sometimes that works really well. Sometimes it works terribly. So often, certainly from a lawyer’s perspective, you’re going to want to ask permission or be counselled as to your precise plans, and how you intend to deliver them so you understand the risks. And you understand if there any icebergs out there that you should be avoiding.

Do Health Professionals Running an Online Program Need a Lawyer?

Stephanie: Okay, great. And so where can we send people now? I mentioned this to you before, where I see people asking for legal advice in every Facebook group I’m in. They’re asking, “What do you do about this? And how do you do this? And does anyone have a disclaimer I can copy or a terms of service or whatever?” Should everyone thinking about running a practice and having online education as part of that, should everyone have their own lawyer? Should everyone be speaking to a lawyer about this stuff?

Glenford: Great question. I hope that this is a question that’s coming up in the context of regulated professionals, because I think it’s really relatable. As a lawyer, my short answer is there’s going to be issues that relate to you in a different way than they relate to everyone else. Understanding what a document says and what it obliges you to do or gives you the right to do is really important. These aren’t easy things to do.

It seems like Terms & Conditions should be something that’s fairly boilerplate, but it depends on how you’re delivering services. If someone’s doing the exact same thing as you, then maybe it’s something you can contemplate using. You probably want to have someone’s eyes over it who is a professional, who for a living goes through documents, in Terms & Conditions and things for them.

Different jurisdictions have different things that they think are important. In the US, for whatever reason, going all caps on certain sections seems to have been built into the way the contracts are built. And so it’s always sort of odd and humourist for a lawyer to deal with a bunch of union contracts, where they clearly have been taken from a US example, and they refer to Acts that don’t exist in Canada. There are rights that are interpreted differently. It can create exposure often, maybe it doesn’t.

But these are documents that you may need to rely on, and you may need to go to court over. So they’re important, Lawyers are expensive, and I understand that. But in the same way that psychotherapists are important to really work through a course of therapy that is set out by a true professional that reflects your circumstances, and is probably a better idea than picking up the top five self-help books that are there on the shelf. You probably are going to see better results, and you’re probably going to achieve whatever your goals are in a better way. It comes at a price.

Stephanie: Yeah, and I mean we’re talking about running a business. We’re talking about having a practice and growing a practice and there are investments that we need to make. Everyone has limited funds. So deciding where you invest your money at different stages in your business is important. And so yes, maybe a lawyer costs money, I mean everything does.

So I think that it’s good for us to have this conversation and bring up some of these points and have people walk away and consider these things. And think about, is an online program a good fit for their practice? Do they want to go that route? And if so, if it makes sense for them to grow, how are they going to enter into doing that? What areas are they going to teach that in? And do they need to invest in having some legal counsel as they move into those areas?

I am someone who has had a lawyer for six or seven years, from so early on in my business. Yes, it’s been an investment, but thank goodness I’m getting great advice. So I think that’s good Glenford, that we all need to look at having people as an investment. When we look at our expenses, what are we spending money on? What’s bringing an ROI? What’s not? What do we need to spend money on in order to get our business or our practice where we want it to go?

I appreciate you being here and having this conversation with us, sharing some of the considerations, and also some of the takeaways that we need to take action. We need to stop sitting around complaining about the rules, and actually band together in numbers to reach out and make some changes. At least within our own profession, in our own country as a starting point. So is there anything that you wanted to end with or share now that we’ve ended up here?

Glenford: Well, to go back to that last point, if you take anything away from this conversation, it is that delivering health programs online, it may not seem like a novel or new area, but it really is. So there are a lot of complexities that are built into it that are important to sort of ferret out and think about how regular processes that we’ve historically had, would be applied in the online context. So a program like this is very helpful. But also, in every discussion and in all parts of this conversation that we’ve had Stephanie, the underlying advice is, there’s a lot of risk here, If you don’t understand it, you need to understand it.

Stephanie: Totally.

Glenford: Because you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And even if your appetite for risk is very high, you still gotta have a sense of what it’s about. So find a lawyer, speak to your friends, and counsel is going to be really, really helpful in these areas where regulations don’t fit very well.

Stephanie: Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate having you here and for sharing a little bit and shedding a little light on this, so that we can at least know some next steps that we can take as we head in this direction.

Glenford: It’s always so fun to chat.

Stephanie: Yeah, it hurts my head though, I’ll let you know. Every conversation I’m like, “Okay, Glenford I need to go have a margarita because this hurts a little bit.” But you know, this is what we signed up for as being regulated health professionals, we want to do it right. We want to do it in a good way to help people. And so this is what we’re in.

I know things can be complicated but the way I look at my job as an advisor to people who want to create these online health programs is to give you the information and shed light in areas that are dark for you. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you have more questions, Glenford where can people find you specifically?

Glenford: Sure, well, I’m pretty sure I’m the only Glenford Jameson on the internet. The website is GSJameson.com

Stephanie: Perfect and I just think that he has the best lawyer name ever of all time, and so you can find Glenford there. I’ll actually put a link to his website and some more notes in the show notes underneath this podcast episode. If you’re listening to this on iTunes or Stitcher or anywhere, head on over to TheLeveragedPractice.com to find the episode and to get those notes.

So I hope this was helpful. If you have any more questions about this kind of subject, if you’d like to hear from any other guests on this topic or other topics related to this kind of thing, please let me know. I’m always so happy to hear from you. You can email me, you can hit me up on Instagram @TheLeveragedPractice as well. I hope again that you enjoyed this and it is my pleasure to be here with you. I’ll see you back here next time.