The consent checkbox, in two languages

A note on what this is: a description of how we build one form element, with illustrative wording. It is not legal advice, and the sample text below is marked for counsel review rather than offered as language to copy.

Three consents that are not the same consent

A new patient signs several things. The Notice of Privacy Practices acknowledgment says they received the notice; it is a HIPAA document about how the practice uses and discloses health information. The treatment consent covers care. Neither says a word about whether the practice may send automated text messages to the number provided, and a plaintiff’s attorney in a TCPA case will make exactly that point. Consent to automated messaging is its own thing, under its own statutes, and it needs its own line.

What the line has to do

• • Be unchecked. A pre-ticked box is not consent under the written-consent standard, and it looks like exactly what it is.
• • Say what will be sent. Automated texts and calls about scheduling, reminders, and follow-up to the number provided. If the practice intends to send anything promotional, that is marketing, and it needs the stricter written-consent standard and, honestly, a separate box.
• • Say it is optional. Consent is not a condition of receiving care. That sentence is required and it is also true.
• • Say how to stop. Reply STOP, and in Spanish ALTO or PARE. Message and data rates may apply.
• • Be clear and conspicuous. Not eight-point grey type under the submit button.

What gets stored, and why a flag is not enough

A checkbox that saves a yes/no is a checkbox that cannot defend itself. Under Florida’s statute and the federal rules the burden of proving consent is on the sender, and “the box was ticked” is a weak proof if nobody can say what the box said at the time. The record needs the timestamp, the form it came from, the IP address, the exact version of the consent text that was displayed, and the language it was displayed in. That last one is the part most forms miss, and it is the whole point of the next section.

The Spanish version is not the English version translated

A Spanish-speaking person who fills in a Spanish form and meets an English consent line has been asked to agree to something they may not have read. Whether that consent would hold up is a question for counsel; whether it is respectful is not. The Spanish line has to exist, it has to say the same things, and it has to be written by a person who knows how the words land in Miami rather than by a plugin.

Two specifics. The stop words have to be the ones the system actually recognises, so if the platform honours ALTO and PARE, the line says ALTO and PARE, not a dictionary word for stop. And formality matters: the intake form uses usted throughout, so the consent line does too. Switching register on the one line that carries legal weight reads as if someone else wrote it, because someone else did.

Illustrative wording, for review

Both are shorter than most forms manage, and both say the four things the statutes ask for. The bracketed practice name is deliberate: the consent names who is sending, which matters when the practice texts from its own number rather than ours.

Where the line lives in the build

On the intake form, above the submit button, in the same language as the rest of the form. Not on a separate page, not in a modal, not inferred from the fact that a person typed a phone number. The language of the form sets the language of the consent, and the consent record stores that language alongside the text version, so when the practice is asked a year later what a particular person agreed to, the answer is a record rather than a recollection.

Questions we get asked about this

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