Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 6

C.R.S. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

Prohibiting psychotherapy, midwifery, medical protocols to pregnant women and clients who have cancer

Although the Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act specifically states that unlicensed, uncertified, and unregistered practitioners shall not practice midwifery and shall not administer medical protocols to a pregnant woman or to a client who has cancer, it does not define what constitutes the practice of midwifery or medical protocols. It is generally accepted that midwifery refers to a health care profession that provides care to women during pregnancy, labor and birth, as well as postpartum care and newborn care. However, practitioners can and do play loose with terminology, so it may seem reasonable that practitioners could, as a course of care, advise a pregnant woman about nutrition and the practitioner's favorite supplements, meaning the supplements they sell. A definition for medical protocols is not as straightforward and can mean anything from medical guidelines to a set of rules for medical treatment. Medical protocols are followed by health care professionals, but practitioners, with their love of loose jargon, could reason that they would be allowed to administer un-medical protocols.

The Colorado Natural Health Care Consumer Protection Act falls short in some areas by not providing clear definitions, however, in prohibiting psychotherapy, the definition is very specific, citing C.R.S. 12-43-201(9), which states,

"Psychotherapy" means the treatment, diagnosis, testing, assessment, or counseling in a professional relationship to assist individuals or groups to alleviate mental disorders, understand unconscious or conscious motivation, resolve emotional, relationship, or attitudinal conflicts, or modify behaviors that interfere with effective, social, or intellectual functioning. Psychotherapy follows a planned procedure of intervention that takes place on a regular basis, over a period of time, or in the cases of testing, assessment, and brief psychotherapy, psychotherapy can be a single intervention.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act includes the prohibition of practicing psychotherapy and provides a specific definition as an appropriate response to the inroads the complementary and alternative health industry has made into the field of psychotherapy by concocting new lines of business, which includes psychosomatic practice, health coach, and mind, body, and spiritual coach.

Consumers are, theoretically, protected from psychosomatic practitioners, health coaches, and mind, body, and spiritual coaches who do not have the education, skills, and training to practice psychotherapy. However, in order for this law to truly work, consumers who seek health care in the complementary and alternative health industry will not only need to have knowledge of the law itself, they will also need knowledge of important definitions, check information practitioners are required to give them and also, be able to discern if a practitioner is performing outside or beyond their training, experience, or competence.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act, for the most part, works in favor of the consumers, but consumers have a lot of work to do to ensure the law is working for them.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act can be read here

Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 5

C.R.S. 6-1-724. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

Prohibiting claims of being a physician or health care professional

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act, in addition to requiring practitioners to disclose to clients that they are not physicians, specifically states that complementary and alternative health care practitioners who are not licensed, certified, or registered by the state shall not hold themselves out as, state, indicate, advertise, or imply they are physicians, surgeons, or both, or that they are health care professionals, licensed, certified, or registered by the state.

For further clarification for the benefit of consumers, as well as practitioners, the Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act references the Colorado Medical Practice Act for defining guidelines. This law states that physicians and surgeons, using a title, word, or abbreviation indicates a license to practice medicine and the diagnosis or treatment of disease, injury, or defect of body or mind, and falls under the broader definition of "practice of medicine", which means holding out one's self to the public as being able to diagnose, treat, prescribe, palliate, or prevent any disease, aliment, pain, injury, deformity, or condition. This applies to health care professionals that are licensed, certified, or registered by the state, which is  the state's assurance to the public that certain criteria have been met, including education from accredited schools, training and residency requirements have been fulfilled, and licensing exams have been successfully completed.

Practitioners that have not met the criteria of appropriate education and training are unable to even apply to take an exam and, therefore cannot be licensed, certified, or registered by the state and no assurance can be given to the public about their safety and welfare when seeking health care from complementary and alternative health care practitioners. To protect the public, the state steps in by explicitly requiring practitioners to disclose their education and training, as well as disclose they are not physicians, prohibits them from holding themselves out as, stating, indicating, advertising, or implying they are physicians or health care professionals, and strictly limits and confines the scope of their practice. These steps are necessary to protect consumers from an industry in which it is customary to feign legitimacy by claiming degrees that turn out to be illegitimate, misrepresent facts, grossly overstate claims about knowledge, skills, and abilities to diagnose and treat, and invent fake diseases and fake cures.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act defines complementary and alternative health care services as:

(A) HEALING PRACTICES USING FOOD; FOOD EXTRACTS; DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS, AS DEFINED IN THE FEDERAL "DIETARY SUPPLEMENT HEALTH AND EDUCATION ACT OF 1994", Pub.L. 103-417; NUTRIENTS; HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES AND PREPARATIONS; AND THE PHYSICAL FORCES OF HEAT, COLD, WATER, TOUCH, SOUND, AND LIGHT;

(B) STRESS REDUCTION HEALING PRACTICES; AND

(C) MIND-BODY AND ENERGETIC HEALING PRACTICES.

Now it is up to individual practitioners to know and respect the statutes and regulations of the jurisdiction and the laws and regulations of their practice.


The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act can be read here

Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 4

C.R.S. 6-1-724. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

Prohibiting recommendations to discontinue care or prescription drugs from health care professionals

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act addresses and prohibits certain practices in the alternative health industry that are detrimental to consumers seeking health care. One overtly common practice is to malign modern medicine. This can happen in any client-practitioner setting, but the practice becomes overt and public when it is stated in a book or on a website. Most commonly, practitioners describe prescription drugs as synthetic, chemically based, produced in a laboratory, and only suppress symptoms, which can cause vital energy to be diverted or cause toxic conditions. Many times prescription drugs and medical doctors are denigrated as part of a billion dollar industry that conspires to keep people from being healthy and is ignorant of the diseases that practitioners in the alternative health industry routinely diagnose and treat.

Beyond the apparent adversarial and unprofessional nature of these claims, the real issue is one of trust, or lack of it, in the client-practitioner relationship. Clients trust practitioners to have their best interests in mind by providing honest, reliable information regarding their health, however, practitioners put client's health at serious risk when they offer personal opinions in an attempt to discredit modern medicine, which suggests to clients that it might seem reasonable to discontinue prescription medication or treatment from a health care professional.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act addresses this issue by prohibiting practitioners from recommending the discontinuation of a course of care, including prescription drugs that are recommended or prescribed by a health care professional. However, there is a fine line between maligning modern medicine and recommending discontinuation of modern medicine treatment. That line is clearly crossed when practitioners claim that whatever they sell, be it supplements, essential oils, organ repositioning, or whatever, is safer and more effective than modern medicine's prescription drugs.

Modern medicine's prescription drugs save lives and yes, suppress symptoms, a very important aspect of patient care, and really are produced in laboratories, which results in standard doses and scientifically studied effects and side effects. Practitioners cannot make any of these claims about the alternative health industry's supplements, essential oils, or herbal products.

Consumer's interests are best served by honesty and openness wherever they seek health care, including complementary and alternative health care.


The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act is here  

Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 3

C.R.S. 6-1-724. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

Prohibiting conventional medical disease diagnosis

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act specifically prohibits practitioners from providing a conventional medical disease diagnosis to a client. This protects consumers from deceptive trade practices and exploitation, the common practice of diagnosis and the subsequent sale of goods or services for the financial gain of the practitioner.

The deception is that practitioners that are not licensed, certified, or registered by the state routinely provide medical diagnoses, but are severely lacking in education, skills, knowledge, training, experience, qualifications, and capabilities to make such a diagnosis. The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act provides consumers protection from really bad health care resulting from incorrect diagnoses, as well as deficient or absence of correct diagnoses. Furthermore, consumers are protected from the practitioner's "pretend medicine", the treatment recommendations of goods or services to treat a disease, which could actually cause harm to the health of the client, and amounts to a waste of available health care dollars.

Practitioners, now prohibited from providing some of their favorite diagnoses that are their biggest money-makers, cannot provide conventional medical disease diagnoses that include food allergies, food intolerance, post-partum depression, early onset puberty, anything about hormones or adrenal glands, cortisol levels, hypothyroid, or diagnoses of fake diseases such as SIgA (Secretory Immunoglobulin A) deficiency or leptin deficiency. The prohibition extends to practitioners who outsource diagnostic tests such as saliva or urine tests.

This common sense approach to "pretend medicine" also means that practitioners who have made medical diagnosis claims on websites or by authoring a book cannot legally back up or support those very claims.

Practitioners that are not licensed, certified, or registered by the state are limited to discussions of conditions that have no scientific validity, therefore are not considered medical diseases, such as "toxins" or something called "stressed out".

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act sets necessary limits on practitioners who are themselves extremely limited by their own lack of education, skills, knowledge, training, experience, qualifications, and capabilities.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act is here

Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 2

C.R.S. 6-1-724. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

Disclosures, enforcement provisions, civil penalties, damages, liability

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act helps consumers who have concerns of alternative health care practitioners customarily practicing beyond their scope. Practitioners routinely expand their scope to include everything, every body system and function, disease or condition, both physical and mental. Furthermore, shortcuts are commonly taken for credentials and even "numerous degrees" from sub-standard, distance-learning, non-accredited schools and diploma mills which feature an average of one year to receive a "degree". A profound breach of trust in the client-practitioner relationship occurs when consumers enter into the relationship with a certain level of trust and the expectation that the practitioner is honest and trustworthy, as well as capable, but the practitioner enters into the relationship seriously deficient in those qualities, as well as in knowledge, education, training, skills, and experience.

In addressing this serious shortcoming of the client-practitioner relationship in the alternative and complementary health care industry, the Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act requires practitioners to disclose their credentials, degrees, training, experience, or any other qualifications, before any services can be provided. This eliminates the consumer's burden of having to request that information, however, that does not eliminate the necessary steps that consumers must take to verify the provided information, or at least, check how much education and training the practitioner has actually had. This is, of course, very important for health care consumers looking for good quality health care, but more importantly, it is very revealing of an industry in which practitioners routinely mislead, dupe, and defraud clients.

In consideration of the public's health and safety, the Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act includes enforcement provisions that include civil penalties and damages, allows any individual's right to seek relief under this act or any other available civil or common law for damages resulting from the negligence, by act or omission, of a practitioner providing complementary and alternative health care, and in some cases  may include penalties for unauthorized practice of a state regulated health care profession.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act was signed with a safety clause: The general assembly finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.

This is welcome and much-needed legislation that not only protects consumers, but also strongly encourages honesty and openness in the alternative health industry.


The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act is here.

Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act-Part 1

C.R.S. 6-1-724. Unlicensed alternative health care practitioners - deceptive trade practices

On the same day Colorado's Naturopathic Doctor Act was signed, June 5, 2013, another act was signed, Colorado's Natural Health Consumer Protection Act. Although this act received much less attention than the Naturopathic Doctor Act, it is, nevertheless, equally important. While the Naturopathic Doctor Act serves to regulate those that are qualified to be naturopathic doctors, the alternative health industry allows practitioners that are not qualified to be doctors to sort of fly under the radar, without benefit of state licensing, certification, or registration. While this may be good for the practitioners, it is bad for consumers.

A key component of The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act makes it easier for the consumer in deciding best options when choosing their health care. The act sets forth an important distinction: complementary and alternative health care practitioners are not classified as health care professionals. Health care professionals are designated as such because state licensing, certification, and registration requirements have been met, in contrast to practitioners who have not met those standards.

To further reinforce this distinction, the act places responsibility on the practitioner to provide clients with clearly written information including the practitioner's name, business address, telephone number, and other contact information, a statement that the practitioner is not licensed, certified, or registered by the state, the type of services to be provided, a list of credentials, degrees, training, experience, or any other qualifications, a statement that the client should discuss all of the practitioner's recommendations with their primary care doctor or other board-certified doctor, and another statement addressing whether or not the practitioner is covered by liability insurance. In addition, before any services can be provided, the practitioner is required to obtain, and keep a record of, a signed acknowledgement from the client stating that they have received all of the required information.

Practitioners are not allowed to treat children under the age of two, however, for children between the ages of two and eight, written, signed consent from the parent or legal guardian is required, along with the practitioner's disclosure of not being a licensed physician, the practitioner's recommendation that the child have a relationship with a licensed pediatric doctor and the practitioner's request for the parent or legal guardian to grant permission for the practitioner to have a collaborative relationship with the child's pediatric doctor.

The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act is standout legislation that covers a lot of concerns that consumers have with complementary and alternative health care. There are a couple of noteworthy items that underscore long-needed consumer protection. The first is that not only is the practitioner held responsible to recommend clients have a relationship with a licensed physician, but also, it is specifically stated that practitioners cannot recommend discontinuation of care or prescription medication from a licensed health care provider, nor can they provide a conventional disease diagnosis to a client. Another noteworthy item is that practitioners are prohibited from performing colonic irrigation, unless certified through the International Association of Colon Hydrotherapy or the National Board for Colon Hydrotherapy.

There is a reason The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act is also referred to as Unlicensed Alternative Health Care Practitioners-Deceptive Trade Practices. Health care consumers have to ensure their own safety when they enter the alternative health world, but now they have a little help.

The entire act can be read here: Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act