What is The Trust Advocate 800 Program? The Trust Advocate 800 Program is intended to help those individuals insured through the Trust sponsored Professional Liability program to avoid or reduce the risk of malpractice actions and disciplinary complaints. The principal service of The Trust Advocate 800 Program is the availability of clinical and legal risk management consultation from an experienced attorney-psychologist to those individuals insured through the Trust sponsored Professional Liability program. The Trust Advocate 800 Program also includes a preventative educational component which will provide CE workshops, newsletter articles, and other risk management products and services designed to heighten recognition of high risk situations and general risk management strategies.

Who should use The Trust Advocate 800 Program?
The Trust Advocate 800 Program is designed to assist psychologists insured through the Trust sponsored Professional Liability Program who are confronting a problem which currently has, or may have, legal or ethical ramifications for their day-to-day practice. The question may be generic or specific. In addition, psychologists who believe that they are at high risk of a suit or who have been notified of circumstances that might result in a suit but who have not, as of that time, been assigned an attorney by the insurance carrier should contact The Trust Advocate 800 Program for consultation on procedures to reduce the possibility of a suit or to control potential damages.

How do I use the service?
Call The Trust Advocate 800 Number (1-800-477-1200) at the first sign of a potential problem. If you wait until the problem has developed it is much harder to limit the potential damage. Remember, in risk management, there is no such thing as a "stupid" or unnecessary call. Your call will be answered by a member of the Trust staff who will record some basic information and will schedule an appointment for the Risk Management Consultant to call you back. When the Consultant calls, be prepared to discuss the issues in some detail. Have your case files and other related documents readily available. In complex situations, the Consultation may include a recommendation that you consult with an attorney or a clinical consultant.

What types of issues are covered and what are excluded?
The Trust Advocate 800 Program is limited to issues that are subject to coverage under the Trust sponsored Professional Liability Program. This includes, but is not limited to, questions about:

• minor children, parents, divorce, custody issues or problematic patients;
• confidentiality and its exceptions; including duty to protect, suicidal client, mandated reporting of child abuse, bill collection;
• forensic issues and court involvement, including expert testimony;
• employment related evaluations;
• conflicts between managed care demands and responsibilities to patients, including certain contractual provisions of managed care contracts;
• responding to complaints before licensing boards and ethics committees ;
• potential conflicts of interests, multiple relationships, allegations of sexual misconduct;
• supervisory responsibilities;
• informed consent, record keeping, access to professional records;

The service is not designed to provide advice on business questions, such as advantages and disadvantages of different organizational structures, anti-trust issues, analysis of business contracts, office leases and employee-employer relations. The service also is not designed for consultation on personal legal questions which are unrelated to professional liability, such as the purchase of a house, tax matters, and interpretations of a legal document such as a will. These types of questions should be addressed by your personal attorney. Questions on types of insurance, pricing, and coverage issues related to your professional liability insurance policy should be addressed to The Trust office (1-800-477-1200).

Other important information about the service.

• The Advocate 800 consultations constitute confidential professional legal advice and receive the confidentiality/privilege protection of the attorney-client relationship. Identifying information cannot be released without an appropriate signed release and, with very rare exceptions, cannot be subpoenaed.
  
• While the consultations represent legal advice, they do not constitute legal representation or a contract to provide legal representation. In some cases, follow-up calls may be recommended, but the Consultant will be the sole judge of whether such calls are appropriate.
  
• The Trust staff will request basic information from each caller as part of the initial intake process. Only aggregate case information about the problem raised will be supplied by the Consultant to The Trust.

The Trust Advocate 800 Consultant.
Eric A. Harris, Ed.D., J.D., a member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1970, received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1969 and his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice from the Harvard University in 1978. In addition to his part time private clinical practice since 1982, Dr. Harris has served as a consultant to the Legal and Regulatory Affairs Division of the APA Practice Directorate and was Legal Counsel for Choate Health Management. He is a faculty member at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Harris has served as a member of the APA’s Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice (CAPP), the Committee on Legal Issues (COLI), the Board of Directors Task Force on Child Issues, and as Treasurer of Division 31. Dr. Harris served as the Director of Professional Affairs for the Massachusetts Psychological Association for 10 years.

Dr. Harris has consulted and lectured throughout the country on risk management and managed care. He has represented psychologists before both ethics committees and state licensing boards and has been a consultant to both plaintiffs and defendants in mental health malpractice actions.