Recording and consent
Recording a session in Washington.
Every party to a private Washington conversation has to consent before it is recorded, and the consent has to be recorded as part of the recording. That is Revised Code of Washington 9.73.030, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Washington the rule is all party.
The statute Revised Code of Washington 9.73.030
Section 9.73.030 is unusual in telling a practitioner exactly how to comply. It requires the consent of all participants to a private conversation, and then provides that consent is considered obtained where one party announces to all others, in a reasonably effective manner, that the conversation is about to be recorded, and where that announcement is itself recorded at the beginning of the recording. That is a statute describing the permission sentence this product generates. Washington also gives the person recorded a civil claim.
Washington is the one state whose statute effectively writes the script for you: announce it, make the announcement part of the recording, and the consent requirement is satisfied in the way the section itself describes.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
Ask the parent or guardian of a client under 18 and capture their agreement on the recording in the same way the statute describes for everybody else. Washington's method, an announcement recorded at the start, works just as well for a parent joining the first minute of a session as it does for the client, and it leaves one file that carries the whole thing.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Washington My Health My Data Act.
This is the Act that makes Washington matter to a health, nutrition or wellbeing practice. It applies regardless of business size, it defines consumer health data broadly enough to cover a note about a client's condition or their attempt to change a bodily function, and it requires separate written authorisation before that data is shared or sold. It carries a private right of action through the state consumer protection act.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- RCW 9.73.030, Washington State Legislature
- My Health My Data Act, Washington State Office of the Attorney General
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Connecticut
- Recording a session in Delaware
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.