Online allied health businesses
While most of us may think about turning up to the physio, exercise physiologist or dietitian in person – it doesn’t have to be that way. Just because these professions are typically associated with in person consultations, doesn’t mean there’s isn’t new, accessible and more convenient ways of interacting with your allied health clients.
The most common form of innovative health service delivery has been the move to telehealth – and more recently – to Zoom or video consultations. While it’s true that there’s a limited number of patients who will need a physical examination, there’s a whole breadth of clients who can be treated online or over the phone. That’s where online allied health businesses can give patients – especially women – the flexibility and accessibility they’re looking for in health service delivery.
We’re also seeing other forms of health service delivery, such as group consultation or education, online courses and membership and even education on a practitioner-to-practitioner basis.
Get creative – if you’ve been thinking about working differently with your allied health clients, talk to us about how to make it happen!
What kind of legal documents do you need to legally protect your allied health business?
Allied health businesses, whether in person or online, should have a few basic legal documents to ensure they’re properly protected.
These include:
- Allied Health Provider Terms and Conditions/ Service Agreement;
- Privacy Policy; and
- Website Terms of Use.
You service agreement (can be called other names) is the main agreement you should have in place as it deals with the heart of your business – the services you deliver to clients. This agreement covers important terms like the scope of your work together (and what you won’t do), fees, payment, cancellations, refunds, ending your work together, resolving disputes, important disclaimers about your services (e.g. not medical advice, etc), limiting your liability (your legal responsibility) and more.
If you have a website, you’ll also need website terms of use. This is a different document to your service agreement because it covers all visitors to your website, not just your clients who sign up to work with you. This is particularly important if you have a blog or provide information on your website about your services.
Your website terms of use will contain important disclaimers (putting people on notice that you’re not providing medical advice on your website, for example), making it clear that you’re the owner of your intellectual property (no copy and pasting here!) and generally telling visitors how they are allowed to use your website.
If you are delivering different services, such as education, an online course, or working with practitioners instead of or in addition to individual clients, then you’ll need extra documents, such as online course terms, or terms that deal with the services you deliver to practitioners (as separate to the terms you’ll need for individual clients).
Lastly, owners of online allied health businesses might want to consider their structure. If you’d like to understand more about moving to a company strcuture, check out our company blog, here. If you’re unsure about what structure is right for you, you can always reach out for legal advice.
Do online allied health businesses need special terms?
It’s especially important to have the right terms in place if you’re delivering services virtually, as clients will rely heavily on your instructions and you won’t have control over the environment in which they perform the activities you recommend.
For this reason, we usually include specific terms in our allied health service agreements to make it a clear responsibility of the client to ensure that they’re engaging with you in a safe and confidential location, and to ensure that the correct disclaimers are in place to protect your virtual instructions.
Do you need a privacy policy for your online allied health business?
Lots of allied health businesses get tripped up on this question! Many allied health providers think that having a privacy policy is optional – or that they don’t need one because they’re a small business.
Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case.
Allied health providers (especially those who collect sensitive information – think information about a client’s medical condition, allergies, health history, access to reports, etc) are required to comply with the Australian Privacy Act. This means that you’ll be required to have a Privacy Act compliant privacy policy.
An Act compliant privacy policy is different to most privacy policies you can find on the internet – which are usually ‘best practice’ policies. An Act compliant privacy policy needs to contain specific information about how you’ll collect, store, use and disclose personal and sensitive information and must deal with key considerations, such as whether the information is being disclosed overseas, how to make a complaint and methods you use to protect the information, among other things.
Take this as a sign to double check whether you need one by speaking to a lawyer – if you don’t have a privacy policy in place and you’re supposed to, you could be up for penalties.
As always, if you’re unsure, feel free to reach out to us.
Q&A with Courtenay Polock - HER Exercise Physiology and HER Education
We’ve worked with several online allied health businesses to help them get legally protected.
Recently, we worked together with Courtenay Polock of HER Exercise Physiology and HER Education– an online exercise physiology business and allied health practitioner education business, respectively.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your business journey?
A: I am an Accredited Exercise Physiologist working in the women’s health space. I own and operate 2 businesses that I have built using social media marketing – HER Exercise Physiology and HER Education.
HER Exercise Physiology is a fully virtual clinic that supports women through all phases of the lifecycle through telehealth consultations. I use exercise interventions to help women navigate health concerns related to Endometriosis/Adenomyosis, chronic pelvic pain, PCOS, infertility or reproductive health concerns, pre/post-natal health care, pelvic floor dysfunction and challenges for women in the perimenopause/menopause transition.
The online clinic was born from a place of personally feeling lost within my industry. I did not resonate with traditional ways of delivering healthcare and never felt pulled to open an in-person clinic. I wanted freedom and flexibility in the form of location and travel and launched the online clinic in the hope of finding a sense of satisfaction within my work.
After building a following on social media I also found myself showcasing my women’s health knowledge to the broader Exercise Physiology community and was regularly asked about recommendations for ongoing professional development in the space.
I personally had struggles finding high quality professional development within women’s health, so I decided to launch HER Education and bring to life high quality professional development programs for exercise physiologists who were just like me.
This platform adopts a collaborative style of delivery, where I support specialised exercise physiologists in delivering their knowledge through online education programs. This not only solves the problem of there being a lack of continuing education but a second need of providing a second source of income for exercise physiologists wanting to educate others and share their knowledge.
Q: Can you tell us how you’re delivering allied health services in a new and innovative way?
A: Telehealth is definitely not a new and innovative way to deliver health services and there are many clinicians who offer this service within allied health. However, it is definitely rarer in the exercise physiology space and the difference between other clinics and HER Exercise Physiology is that I am 100% virtual.
Telehealth is not an adjunct to my in-person services. We do not offer any in person services at all. This means the clinic has been set up to support online delivery from initial inquiry and onboarding of new clients, how I assess and prescribe exercise, the service model and all the tiny components that make delivering exercise online seamless.
I have put lots of effort and focus on addressing all barriers of accessing and delivering exceptional healthcare online including one-of-a-kind resources provided within my service that is significantly different to how traditional exercise physiology is delivered. I pride myself on being able to bring to life a service that is a little out of the box and serves a very different clientele.
Q: What’s some advice you’d tell other women in allied health who are looking to do things differently?
A: My biggest piece of advice to women wanting to do things a little differently is to not get caught up in the ‘that is not how it’s done’ mentality. There are no rules in business. You can design and deliver your service in any way you like. It might take a little more work to get it in front of the right customers, but the satisfaction in doing things that resonates with you and fits in with your lifestyle is worth every effort.
If you are lost with where to start and how to get things up and moving, find someone who has done something a little bit similar to you and research the hell out of them. Look to other industries and what they do well and implement some of the things that work well.
Be creative in your thinking and know that you can change things at any point in time, so if something isn’t working don’t look at it as a failure, see it as an opportunity to refine and develop. And don’t let others tell you, ‘that won’t work’, because it can.
Q: What’s it been like to work with Her Lawyer?
A: Working with Her Lawyer has been fantastic! Not only have I learnt so much about the legalities of operating an allied health business and a collaborative education platform but also understanding how to protect myself when setting up commercial agreements with bigger companies.
This information is always hard to find and having the team at Her Lawyer to support me has been invaluable. The service delivery with the creation of all of my legal documents was seamless and professional, from inquiry through to final copies and even support along the way.
I feel incredibly safe operating my businesses and recommend them to anyone I come across who works within healthcare.
Need some legal help? Book a Discovery Call
If you’ve identified something that’s affecting your business, or you’d like to discuss how these topics apply to you, you can book a free discovery call with Her Lawyer here.
