The consent a telehealth visit has to record

A definitions section that also imposes a duty

California defines telehealth for its healing arts division in a single section, and the same section carries an operative obligation rather than only vocabulary.

Telehealth means the mode of delivering health care services and public health via information and communication technologies to facilitate the diagnosis, consultation, treatment, education, care management, and self-management of a patient's health care. The definition adds that telehealth facilitates patient self-management and caregiver support, and that it includes synchronous interactions and asynchronous store and forward transfers.

The section defines the two ends of an encounter as well. An originating site is where a patient is located at the time services are provided via a telecommunications system, or where the asynchronous store and forward service originates, and a distant site is where the health care provider is located while providing those services.

Synchronous interaction means a real-time interaction between a patient and a health care provider located at a distant site. Asynchronous store and forward means the transmission of a patient's medical information from an originating site to the health care provider at a distant site.

Both are inside the definition of telehealth, which matters for the duty in the next subdivision. The obligation does not switch off because an encounter was asynchronous.

The definitions are also framed for the whole division rather than for one profession. The section opens by stating that for purposes of that division the listed definitions apply, which is why the same vocabulary governs a wide set of licensed practitioners rather than only those regulated by one board.

The consent, and what makes it count

The duty is written as a sequence with a fixed order.

Before the delivery of health care via telehealth, the health care provider initiating the use of telehealth shall inform the patient about the use of telehealth and obtain verbal or written consent from the patient for the use of telehealth as an acceptable mode of delivering health care services and public health.

Two features of that sentence do most of the work. The obligation falls on the provider initiating the use of telehealth, and the consent is to telehealth as a mode of delivery.

It is therefore not the same thing as informed consent to a treatment. This provision is about the channel, and a separate body of law governs agreement to the care itself.

The last sentence of the subdivision is the enforceable part. The consent shall be documented. Verbal consent is permitted, but a verbal consent that leaves no record does not satisfy the requirement as written.

The informing limb sits before the consent limb in the same sentence, and it has no stated content. The statute requires the provider to inform the patient about the use of telehealth without specifying what that explanation must contain, which leaves the substance to the standard of practice the section elsewhere says continues to apply.

Failure is a licence matter

California states the consequence in the same section rather than leaving it to general principle.

The failure of a health care provider to comply with the section shall constitute unprofessional conduct, and the section disapplies a provision that would otherwise have limited the effect of that.

That places a paperwork obligation in the same statutory category as the conduct grounds a board acts on, which is a stronger position than a regulation or a guideline.

The section also states that all laws and regulations governing professional responsibility, unprofessional conduct, and standards of practice that apply to a health care provider under their licence apply to that provider while providing telehealth services.

That sentence forecloses a common misreading. The telehealth section adds a duty; it does not create a separate, lighter regime for anything else the provider does.

The things the section says it does not do

A run of subdivisions in the same section exists to stop the definition being read as a grant of authority, and each one is worth reading on its own.

The section does not preclude a patient from receiving in-person health care delivery services during a specified course of health care and treatment after agreeing to receive services via telehealth. Consenting to telehealth once does not convert a course of care into a telehealth-only course of care.

The section does not alter the scope of practice of a health care provider, or authorise the delivery of health care services in a setting, or in a manner, not otherwise authorised by law. A provider's licence reaches exactly as far over a connection as it does in a room.

All laws regarding the confidentiality of health care information and a patient's rights to their own medical information apply to telehealth interactions. The channel does not change the record rules.

The section also does not apply to a patient under the jurisdiction of the state corrections department or any other correctional facility, which is a carve-out from the consent duty rather than a statement about the care itself.

Taken together these subdivisions do something worth naming. They convert a definitions section into a floor rather than a ceiling: everything a licensee was already bound by continues to bind them over a connection, and the section adds one further obligation on top rather than substituting a lighter set of rules for the ordinary ones.

Who the duty falls on, and one comparison

The definition of health care provider decides how wide the consent duty runs, and California's is broader than physicians.

It covers a person licensed under the healing arts division of the code, and then names several categories of associate and trainee practitioners functioning under specified sections, including associate marriage and family therapists and trainees, associate clinical social workers, and associate professional clinical counsellors and clinical counsellor trainees.

It also covers a qualified autism service provider certified by a national entity as defined in the code, and a qualified autism service professional as defined in the code. The consent duty therefore attaches across a wide set of licensed and supervised practitioners rather than to physicians alone.

The section closes with a hospital credentialing provision. Notwithstanding any other law, the governing body of the hospital whose patients are receiving telehealth services may grant privileges to, and verify and approve credentials for, providers of telehealth services based on its medical staff recommendations that rely on information provided by the distant-site hospital or telehealth entity, as described in named federal regulations, and the Legislature states that its intent in enacting the subdivision was to authorise exactly that.

The privileging subdivision also carries a definitional note that resolves a common terminology problem. For the purposes of that subdivision, telehealth shall include telemedicine as the term is referenced in the named federal regulations, which means the two words are not doing different work at that point in the section even though only one of them is defined earlier.

It is worth setting this beside the way another state handles records in the same setting. Virginia, in the conditions for establishing a practitioner-patient relationship by telemedicine, requires that upon request the prescriber provides patient records in a timely manner in accordance with the state health records provision and all other state and federal law. California documents the consent; Virginia conditions the relationship partly on producing the record. The two states are solving related problems with different instruments, and neither result can be assumed from the other.

Sources

Each document below is named as it names itself, with the date printed on that document rather than the day it was read.

1. California Business and Professions Code section 2290.5, telehealth definitions, the consent and documentation duty, and the unprofessional conduct clause — California Legislative Information, California Legislature, January 2026
2. California Business and Professions Code section 2242, stating that an appropriate prior examination does not require a synchronous interaction — California Legislative Information, California Legislature, October 2019
3. Code of Virginia section 54.1-3303, including the condition that a prescriber provide patient records in a timely manner upon request — Virginia Law, Virginia General Assembly, 2025