Bradley Muldrow, JD
CAMFT Staff Attorney

As a CAMFT staff attorney, Bradley J. Muldrow, Esq. takes member phone calls regarding law and ethics issues and contributes articles on those subjects to CAMFT's publication, the Therapist. Prior to joining CAMFT’s legal team, Brad worked on litigation and regulatory matters as an attorney for San Diego Gas & Electric Company.

Since becoming an attorney, Brad has given law and ethics presentations to attorneys and judges as a member of the J. Clifford Wallace Inn of Court. He has also served as a board member for the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Foundation, a San Diego-based nonprofit.

"New Platforms, Same Laws"

October 17, 2025 | 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM  (2 CE hours)

Session Description:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the popularity of telehealth and online therapy platforms offering telehealth services to patients has skyrocketed. CAMFT has received numerous calls over the years from therapists who have encountered novel and complex legal and ethical issues while working for these platforms 

In this two-hour workshop, Bradley Muldrow, Esq. will provide a helpful overview of how therapists can navigate some of the most common legal and ethical issues providers face when working for online therapy platforms. These issues include how to respond when being assigned patients who are located out of state, maintaining a separate, exclusively private-pay practice while working with a platform that accepts insurance, navigating abrupt treatment termination scenarios, identifying and avoiding financial exploitation of patients, recordkeeping considerations, and more. 

Goals:

Participants will understand what online therapy platforms are and recognize some of the most common legal and ethical issues providers for such platforms navigate. Participants will understand the importance of upholding their legal and ethical responsibilities even if the platforms they work for request or expect that to take actions that are not consistent with their legal and ethical duties. Participants will understand when therapists can and cannot treat patients who are physically located across state lines during sessions. 

Learning Objectives: 

• Participants will be able to identify a recent law clarifying that online therapy platforms are health care providers that are generally required to adhere to the standards of California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act.
• Participants will be able to distinguish between individual and group insurance contracts.
• Participants will be able to distinguish between “messaging-based therapy services” and more common forms of text-based communications with patients (e.g. “check-in” and scheduling text messages).
• Participants will be able to state why California therapists are not legally permitted to provide telehealth to patients who are “anonymous” to their therapists (e.g. patients who refuse to provide their therapists with their full names, provide their therapists with pseudonyms, etc.).