Legal/Regulatory

Legal Considerations

When establishing a TMH program, there are some legal considerations that are specific to this modality. Below are a few resources that should be helpful.

General Legal/Regulatory Resources for TMH

  • Telepsychology: Key recommendations for ethical, legal, and effective practice (Barnett et al., 2024) – This article published by the American Psychological Association provides a helpful overview of ethical and legal issues to consider when delivering TMH services. It is available via CALiO ™.
  • Legal Considerations – This page on Telehealth.HHS.gov summarizes legal considerations when providing telehealth services.
  • Policy Finder -The Center for Connected Health Policy tracks and compiles telehealth-related laws and regulations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and at the federal level (54 jurisdictions in total). CCHP’s free Policy Finder database is updated consistently throughout the year. Policies can be searched by jurisdiction and topic.
  • States’ TeleMental Health Laws, Rules, and Regulations – This page of the Telehealth Certification Institute website provides behavioral health professionals resources for locating the laws, rules, and regulations for providing telemental health services in the United States of America. You can look up state-specific information related to TMH laws by state, duty to warn, age of consent, and mandated reporter laws.
  • Telehealth.org Newsletters – Sign up here to receive newsletters from Telehealth.org on TMH issues, including legal updates.

Page Last Updated: June 2024

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