Is an exam required before a patient can be treated in Alabama?
Intake · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — they require the physician's written protocol to contain criteria for screening whether a patient is appropriate for non-ablative treatment, but they do not mandate a separate physician exam before treatment.
Alabama puts the consent duty on the delegating physician and names what it must cover. Before a delegated non-ablative treatment the physician must ensure the patient is adequately informed and has SIGNED a consent form setting out Risks, Benefits, Alternatives and Complications — including reasonably foreseeable side effects, and the name of the device and the procedure. The protocol must also carry selection criteria to screen patients for the appropriateness of a non-ablative treatment. On the clinical side, obtaining patient histories, performing physical examinations, formulating a working diagnosis and developing a treatment plan are named services a physician assistant performs under delegation from the supervising physician.
Drawn from 5 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Ala. Admin. Code r. 540-X-11-.05(3) (Written protocols — patient selection) · Sep 4, 2026
- Ala. Admin. Code r. 540-X-11-.04(2)(a) (Delegation and supervision — informed consent) · Sep 4, 2026
- Ala. Admin. Code r. 540-X-7 (Services performed by a physician assistant under delegation) · Sep 4, 2026
- Ala. Admin. Code r. 610-X-6 (definition of “Assessment, Comprehensive”) · Sep 4, 2026
- Ala. Code § 34-24-703(b)(1), (d) · Sep 8, 2026
Related Alabama rules
(3) Selection criteria to screen patients for the appropriateness of non-ablative treatments;
Ala. Admin. Code r. 540-X-11-.05(3) (Written protocols — patient selection) · verified Sep 4, 2026
(a) Ensuring that patients are adequately informed and, prior to treatment, have signed consent forms that outline Risks, Benefits, Alternatives, and Complications, including the disclosure of reasonably foreseeable side effects and complications that may result from the non-ablative treatment, as well as the name of the device and the procedure;
Ala. Admin. Code r. 540-X-11-.04(2)(a) (Delegation and supervision — informed consent) · verified Sep 4, 2026
How other states answer this
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
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← All Alabama rules and changes · MedSpaRadar is regulatory monitoring and reference: it summarizes public laws, regulations and agency actions and links each to its source. It is not legal, medical, or compliance advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. A summary can lag its source or leave out detail, and monitoring itself can be interrupted — so an absence of alerts means nothing reached you, not that nothing happened. Read the cited source, check its effective date, and confirm any change to your operations or clinical practice with qualified health-law counsel and your medical director. Legislative data via LegiScan (CC BY 4.0).