79 | Navigating Insurance as a Clinical Herbalist

0:00 Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. So today, I'm going to answer a question that was submitted anonymously. And before I do that, I just want to remind you that if you have a question that's been on your mind, something you'd like me to address, I would love to do that. You can go to intheclinic.com and submit a question through the form there, or you're welcome to email me, and I would be more than happy to share my thoughts on whatever's happening on your mind. And I'm happy to keep you anonymous if that is your preference. So, today I have a question that was submitted actually quite a while ago from somebody, and I recorded a full episode a few weeks back, and unfortunately, right before I recorded it, apparently, my headset died.

0:49 Silent but deadly death and anyway just threw a monkey wrench in the whole thing so finally i'm ready to re-record so here we are take two i'm hoping this one will will come through let me read you the question so here's what this person writes from my herb schools business class and from talking to other practitioners i've gotten the impression that there isn't very good insurance for herbalists no herbal practitioners i know have insurance and it feels like a bit of we're holding our breath and hoping we won't get sued. We were taught to have very thorough informed consent and to be very clear about our scope. So they're just wondering if I could chat a little bit more about reflections on this. So yes, now before I do, let me just be really clear that I am not a lawyer.

1:32 I'm not an insurance professional. I'm just a practitioner who has looked into this myself and worked with other people who've done the same. So I need you to take this as one perspective and please do your due diligence in how this applies to you, if it applies to you, and what options are available to you. So that being said, I want to first clarify what we mean by insurance. There are actually lots of different types of insurance that might be relevant to you as a herbal practitioner. What I'm going to very specifically be focusing on is things that are relevant to clinical herbalists. There are people who, of course, are making products either for public consumption like farmers market sales or health food store sales, as well as, you know, extracts, formulas, that sort of thing for clients.

2:19 That is outside of my scope. As far as I know, none of these policies are relevant to product sales. And that is much more challenging to find insurance for. So again, to be super clear, I'm talking about the clinical component of the work that many of us do. Now. The types of insurance, again, I'm just going to do a loose overview of some of the most common types that might be relevant to us. There's more. But one of them is general liability. And this applies not just to herbalists, but anyone who has a business might consider general liability. And this is things like somebody comes to your premises and they slip and fall, or something happens to them while they're there, or you rent a facility to have a class in and it gets damaged somehow.

3:01 You accidentally break the air conditioning or I don't know, whatever, something like that. General liability insurance would hopefully cover that. There's also professional liability insurance. This is what is also sometimes known as errors and omissions insurance. And this relates to the specific job you have been trained to do. So in our case as herbalists, that might mean you recommended a formula to somebody and they felt that it made them worse, that damage happened because of it, or you failed to highlight a safety issue related to something that they were taking, something along those lines, that would be errors and omissions. And that should fall under professional liability. There's also other types of insurance, such as participant accident insurance.

3:43 And this is when you're teaching a class and maybe somebody slices their finger open when you're cutting up garlic or the billboard falls on their head or whatever, that sort of thing. There is business interruption insurance, such as you're bopping along, making money to support you, and you break your leg and you're not able to get to work for a while, or that's whatever, these types of things. So those are just some of the options that are available. Most of us are probably most interested in professional liability insurance. And professional liability insurance as an herbalist is hard to come by because we are not a regulated profession. There are only two companies that I know of that explicitly offer herbal insurance in this way.

4:29 One of them is alternative balance, and one of them is, I believe, the American Acupuncture Council still offers this. That is a policy that used to be recommended by the American Herbalist Guild. There may be others that I'm not aware of, but as of right now, these are the only two that I'm familiar with. Okay, so how do you decide should you buy one of these? Is it worth it to you? The first thing that I recommend doing if you are planning to buy any kind of insurance is ask for a copy of the policy, not the sales copy on the website, or what they say, but the policy itself and read through it. They're long, they're kind of complicated to understand sometimes, but it is worth it. I personally have Alternative Balance. I have read through the policy, and it is a little bit opaque.

5:16 And I'll just tell you, I'll walk you through how I decided to purchase it. So the first thing to me is trying to figure out what exactly it covers. The policy itself does not mention a ton of specifics about herbs. It is professional liability coverage specifically for herbs. Herbal practitioners. It says herbal consultations. So I have to assume that at least some herbal consultation work would be covered. I don't actually feel super confident about the extreme scope of what is included. However, I decided to buy it anyway for a variety of reasons. One of the things I really, as I was reading through this, and actually other policies I thought in the past is that they're all very clear that you absolutely may not treat warts.

6:05 I don't know what is so specific about warts, but please, if you have insurance, do not. Don't do that. It's not covered. It's very... Anyway, I'll have to look into why that is, but every single policy I've ever read is like, that's the one thing. Don't do that. Okay. Anyway, I decided to get it anyway, because to me, the policy that is offered has both general and professional liability as well as business interruption coverage. And to me, those three things combined are worth the annual price that I'm paying in case something were to happen. I feel like if nothing else that I would have the possibility of receiving some reimbursement for legal fees, some support, you know, some support if I were to get sued and that sort of thing.

6:58 So to me, it is worth the price. I actually pay a slightly higher price because I have to add on the nutrition work that I do. So I can just share with you if anybody's interested. For me, the annual price is $4.08. And again, a substantial amount of that is actually the add-on for nutrition. So I think it's quite a good deal less for people who are only herbalists. Okay. So basically, I decided to buy it because I am more of a rather be safe than sorry person. However, I don't have good details on what are the risks, what are the possibility that I might be sued. One of the other things that I have done is I have hired a lawyer to look over my consent forms just to make sure that they're as clear as they could be, that they are likely to uphold in court, that people understand what they're getting and the risks that they're taking when they work with me.

7:50 And I also try to be really clear with my clients on. You know, as much information as I can about what I'm doing and what I'm not doing, their choices to take herbs or not take herbs, all of these different types of things. So I'm pretty much a cautious person. And for that reason, I think it's better to do this. I also have the money coming into my practice to be able to afford that. Again, I don't want to make any specific recommendations because I don't know. Anybody's individual situation. But what I can say is if you were thinking about not getting insurance or if you don't really think this insurance applies to you, the things that I would want to do instead would be to first of all, make sure that you have a very clear separation between your personal finances and your business finances, ideally having an LLC or something along those lines if LLC is not what your country does.

8:47 But I would definitely do that so that, you know, if you are being sued because of your business stuff, then really you're just your business finances are at risk and not your personal is the way I understand that if you set up your LLC correctly. So I absolutely do that. And then I would, I do think it makes sense to have a lawyer look over your informed consent policy that you are having people sign and definitely make sure that you do have that in order to protect yourself as much as possible. So anyway, that is my recommendation. It is a lot to think about. And like I said, in terms of professional liability, I think it's probably somewhat limited.

9:27 However, to me, the option of the general liability, the business interruption, business property. Coverage. To me, that kind of swayed me in the direction of getting it. And I actually would be very interested if you or anyone you know has ever had to use their professional liability insurance as an herbalist. I'd be super curious to talk to that person, even anonymously or off the record, so to speak, just to hear more about how that went, what was covered, and so forth. So that's not a very definitive answer. And I'm sorry for that. However, I think it's a murky gray area and something that you may have to weigh against. Like, okay, how many clients do I have?

10:12 What are the chances of something happening? And then how devastating and damaging would it be? And deciding, do I want to do this now? Do I want to wait until I have a certain amount of income coming in where it would not be a, you know, where I would be able to afford it more easily? Do I want to just put some money away every month as part of my business expenses for this? Really thinking it through. Again, for me, I just like to be safe to provide as many layers of safety as I can. And it seems like a reasonable expense, for me at this time. So that's why I have the Alternative Balance one. And lastly, to be super clear, I actually just recently switched to Alternative Balance.

10:52 I've only had it for less than a year because up until recently, I've been a licensed nutritionist. So I had a different insurance that was available for licensed nutritionists. They don't have insurance for herbalists. So when I let go of my nutrition license earlier this year, I switched insurance and chose Alternative Balance. So that's what I'm doing now. anyway i hope that helps if you have any follow-up questions or additional information that you'd like me to add to the pot for people to consider please reach out anytime and otherwise i hope to be back in touch sooner than has been with another podcast episode all right thanks everybody if you would like to stay in touch please go to my website camillefreeman.com newsletter sign up for my newsletter i'll send it out every thursday and i will let you know when new podcast episodes come out.

11:40 All right. Take care. Bye.