What a video or remote visit with a Sleep Balance Academy clinician involves, what it can and cannot do, what the risks are, and what you are agreeing to when you accept.
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Please read this before your first visit. It explains what a remote visit with a Sleep Balance Academy clinician involves and what you are agreeing to. If anything here is unclear, ask before you accept. You can also ask your clinician to go through it with you at the start of your visit.
1What telehealth is
Telehealth means receiving care from a clinician who is not in the same room as you, using video, audio, secure messaging, and information you send us such as a questionnaire or the results of a home sleep test. Your clinician uses the same professional judgment and is held to the same standard of care as they would be in person.
A telehealth visit creates a clinician and patient relationship. Your clinician is responsible for your care during that relationship, and the visit becomes part of your medical record.
2What happens in a visit
You book a time, and we tell you who your clinician will be.
Before the visit you may be asked to complete a questionnaire or upload information. Answer as completely and accurately as you can, because your clinician is relying on it.
At the appointed time you join from your patient portal. You need a device with a camera and microphone, and a connection good enough to hold a video call.
Your clinician talks with you, reviews what you have sent, and discusses what they recommend. They will tell you what happens next and when.
After the visit, a record of it goes into your chart. Anything ordered for you, including a test or a device, is shown in your portal.
3What telehealth can do well, and what it cannot
Remote care removes travel, makes it easier to see a clinician who has the right expertise, and often means being seen sooner. Those are real benefits and they are why we offer it.
It also has limits you should understand before you agree to it.
No physical examination. Your clinician cannot physically examine you. They cannot listen to your chest, feel for something, or look inside your airway. Some conditions cannot be assessed properly without that.
Technology can fail. The connection can drop, the video can freeze, and audio can be unclear. That can interrupt a visit or make it necessary to reschedule.
Sometimes in-person care is required. If your clinician decides that telehealth is not appropriate for your situation, they will tell you and refer you for in-person care. That is a clinical judgment and it is not negotiable, because seeing you in person may be the safer answer.
We rely on what you tell us. Working from information you provide means an incomplete or inaccurate answer can lead to a wrong conclusion. Tell your clinician everything relevant, even if it seems unimportant.
Electronic transmission carries some risk. We protect your information carefully, but no system that transmits information over the internet can be guaranteed against every risk.
No promised result. A visit does not guarantee any particular outcome, any particular diagnosis, or any particular treatment or prescription.
4Where you have to be
Your clinician must be licensed in the state where you are physically located at the moment of your visit. That is a legal requirement and there is no way around it.
So we ask you to confirm where you are before a visit, and to tell us if that changes. If you are somewhere your clinician is not licensed, we will either find you a clinician who is, or reschedule for when you are back. We will not charge you for a visit that cannot go ahead for this reason.
We provide care only to people located in the United States.
5Prescriptions, tests and devices
Your clinician decides what, if anything, to prescribe or order, based on their professional judgment. Booking a visit, paying for a visit, or asking for a particular medication or device does not entitle you to receive it, and a clinician who declines to prescribe something is doing their job.
The rules about prescribing certain controlled medications without an in-person examination are set by federal and state law and they change. If a rule means your clinician needs to see you in person before prescribing, they will tell you.
Some devices can only be shipped on the order of a licensed clinician. Where that applies, we will not ship without a current, valid order.
6Who else may be present, and recording
Only you, your clinician, and anyone either of you has agreed can be present should be in the visit. If someone is with you, tell your clinician who they are. A clinician may occasionally have a colleague or a supervised trainee present; if so, they will introduce them and you can ask for them to leave.
We tell you before any part of a visit is recorded, and you can say no. You will not be refused care for declining to be recorded.
Where a recording is made, it becomes part of your medical record and is protected in the same way as the rest of it. Do not record the visit yourself without telling your clinician, both because your clinician should know and because recording law differs by state.
Choose somewhere private to take your visit. We cannot control who can overhear you at your end.
7Your information
Everything in a telehealth visit is protected health information. How we may use and share it, and what rights you have over it, is set out in our Notice of Privacy Practices. In short: we use it to care for you, to be paid for that care, and to run the practice, and anything beyond that needs your written permission.
We do not put advertising or analytics technology inside your patient portal or inside a visit, and we do not share anything about your care with an advertising platform.
8What a visit costs
We tell you the cost before you book. Cancellations, missed appointments, what happens when a clinician cancels, and what happens when technology fails are all covered in our Clinical Cancellation, No-Show and Billing Policy, which is a separate document because those rules have nothing to do with returning a product.
If a visit does not happen, you are not charged for it. If you were charged and the visit did not happen, we refund you.
9Your right to say no, and to change your mind
Agreeing to telehealth is your choice. You can decline it, and you can withdraw this consent at any time, without giving a reason.
Withdrawing consent stops future telehealth visits. It does not affect care you have already received, and it does not close your account or delete your record.
You can ask to be seen in person instead. We will tell you honestly whether we can arrange that ourselves or whether you need a referral elsewhere.
You can stop a visit part way through, and you can decline any part of what is recommended.
Withdrawing consent is done from the consents area of your patient portal, or by writing to support@sleepbalanceacademy.com.
10What we record when you accept
When you accept, we record the exact wording you were shown, the date and time, and which version of this document it was. You can ask us for a copy of exactly what you agreed to at any point, and we will send it to you.
Before you can accept, you have to confirm that you have read and understood this document. That confirmation is a separate step from accepting.
11Consent for someone else
If you are a parent or legal guardian consenting for a child, or someone with legal authority to make health decisions for another adult, you are giving this consent on their behalf and confirming that you have the authority to do so. We may ask you to show that authority. State law decides when a minor can consent for themselves and when a parent has access to a record, and we follow the law of the state where the patient is located.
12What you are agreeing to
You have read this
You have read this document, you have had the chance to ask questions, and your questions have been answered.
You understand the limits
You understand what a remote visit can and cannot do, including that your clinician cannot examine you physically and that the technology can fail.
You agree to receive care this way
You consent to receive care from a Sleep Balance Academy clinician by telehealth.
You know you can change your mind
You understand you can withdraw this consent at any time without affecting the care you have already received.
For a clinical question, message your care team through your patient portal rather than by email, because the portal is the secure channel and your clinician sees it.
