Alternative Medicine: Non-Traditional Healers Subject To State Regulation, Court Says
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
May 1997
Quick Summary: Alternative medicine involves different treatment regimens than those used by traditional doctors.
However, a non-traditional healer must still possess a basic scientific knowledge of the nature of disease and the disease process.
Standards for obtaining patients’ informed consent and for maintaining patients’ records do not vary based on the treatment regimen a particular physician chooses to employ in his or her practice.
NEW YORK SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, 1996.Nutritional therapists are permitted to practice in New York under the Alternative Medical Practice Act. But like all other healthcare professionals, alternative practitioners can be called to answer to charges of gross negligence, gross incompetence, failure to obtain informed consent to treatment, failure to keep adequate patient records, and excessive charges, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, has ruled.
The court ruled the state board for professional medical conduct’s decisions are not to be overruled for bias just because the board is made up of a mixture of advocates for alternative practice, members of the general public, and medical doctors practicing in certain recognized specialties within traditional medicine. Gonzalez vs. New York State Department of Health, 648 N.Y.S. 2d 827 (N.Y. App., 1996).