Legal Requirements for Your Therapy Practice Website: Terms of Use, Privacy Policies, and Disclaimers

As a health therapist, making the move to launch your website is a big, exciting decision! It allows you to get your name and message out there so you can help more people and establish your credibility. Before you hit “publish” on your new website, make sure you’ve covered all of your legal bases, as this is especially important in the health and therapy field. 

People’s health, both physical and mental, is such an intimate, personal, and vulnerable topic. Therefore, as a health therapist, you want to do everything in your power to ensure your website has the proper legal protections and requirements in place to protect both you and your website users. Read on for a few important legal requirements that you should definitely have in place on your therapist's website.

Website Terms of Use

A website terms of use section is a set of rules and guidelines that set out how the general public can and can’t interact with your website and use your content. This is crucial on websites for therapists, as the content and information will be used in a very personal way by the user consuming it. Having a solid website terms of use section protects you and your business from having your content stolen, misused, or being sued in the event that someone uses your content and implies harm was caused. If you are a licensed provider, this could save you your license in the long-run.

A website terms of use section includes rules and guidelines on things such as refund policies, purchase terms, payment processes, intellectual property, etc. If you have an online shop or offer digital products, this is key. 

Your website terms of use will also include any professional disclaimers about the content or information on your site. Basically, this lets the general public know that your content is general information only, not personal advice. 

If you’re a health therapist offering one-on-one services, this information should also be included in specific detail in your client contracts and agreements. However, it’s still essential to include it on your website for the general public. 

Website Disclaimers

Professional website disclaimers are really important for health therapists and other providers who might be giving helpful tools and resources to clients but that are NOT intended to replace one-to-one care. 

A website disclaimer is a legal statement in which one party (you, the therapist) tells the other party (the person consuming your content/advice) that they deny legal responsibility for something that may happen as a result of the person using the tools or implementing the advice given by you. 

On a website for therapists, it’s important to include “Use at your Own Risk” disclaimers that state that the content, information, resources, tools, etc, are to be used for educational and informational purposes only and that there is not a patient-client relationship being formed by their use of the website and/or its content. You also need a disclaimer stating that any resources posted aren’t to be considered a replacement for individual advice. These disclaimers would also apply if you are starting an online group, course, membership, etc, for your therapy business.

Another important disclaimer to include on your therapist website is a testimonial disclaimer. If you want to highlight client testimonials on your website, you must include a disclaimer stating that all results and situations differ and may vary from individual to individual.  

Clear Website Messaging

If you provide coaching services as well as counselling or other patient care through your therapy business, it’s really important that your messaging and terms are CLEAR on what the person is receiving, whether it be coaching, counselling, etc. 

As a health professional, you do not want your client thinking that your group coaching program is a replacement for individualized care or therapy. Be clear about what you offer, what your credentials are, and ensure all of your website copy and terms in your client agreements are crystal clear on this.

Digital Product Licenses

If you are selling or sharing any kind of resources on your therapist website, you want to protect your copyright and intellectual property. Being clear in your website terms of use on how people can and can’t use your content is important. This goes both for free resources and paid products. It’s also a good idea to include a terms of use page inside your free and paid resources.

Privacy Policy

A website privacy policy is different from your confidential patient form. A privacy policy for a website applies to all the data you collect on your website, knowingly or unknowingly from anyone who uses and interacts with your website. 

A privacy policy tells the users on your site what data you’re collecting, whether it be their name, email address, or phone number, how you’re collecting it, and why. It also communicates to users what rights they have on your website. In some places, like California, users can request a copy of the information and data you’ve collected on them.

A great rule of thumb is to only collect the bare minimum of data from your website users to provide your resources and user experience through your website. For example, if a user is downloading a free resource, your opt-in form should only ask for their name and email address. 

Your privacy policy should be unique to your website and your business policies, so don’t go copy/pasting someone else’s!

As a health therapist, you may have a general understanding of certain policies you need to have in place in your business when serving clients, but it’s so important that you take the steps necessary to protect yourself online with solid website terms of use, disclaimers, privacy policies, and clear messaging. 

The health/wellness/therapy space is not one to mess around with when it comes to legal requirements. If you want to ensure you have your bases covered, check out the website terms of use and privacy policy template bundle from Contracts Market, a trusted source for legal templates for online business owners. 

The website terms of use and privacy policy templates make it easy to ensure you have everything you need to protect yourself and your business on your website.

*Disclaimer - This post includes an affiliate link for Contracts Market templates. If you purchase through the link, I may receive a commission.