Is an exam required before a patient can be treated in Arkansas?
Intake · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Yes — for laser treatment the physician must personally diagnose the patient and prescribe the procedure, and before any telemedicine visit a patient/provider relationship must be established; an online medical history form alone does not establish it.
Arkansas puts the diagnosis on the physician personally, as the first step of the laser protocol. Within that laser rule, before a delegated minor procedure the physician must PERSONALLY diagnose the condition of the patient and prescribe the treatment and procedure to be performed. The delegation rule reaches the same place from the other direction: before delegating anything the physician must determine that the task is indicated for the patient and fix the appropriate level of supervision, and where drugs are involved must evaluate the acuity of the patient and judge that delegation is appropriate at all.
Drawn from 5 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- 17 CAR § 140-3201(a) (Telemedicine — patient/provider relationship) · Sep 4, 2026
- 17 CAR § 140-3201(b)(1) (Telemedicine — standard of care) · Sep 4, 2026
- 17 CAR § 140-1601(b)(2)(A) (Laser surgery guidelines) · Sep 4, 2026
- 17 CAR § 140-2504 (Procedures for delegating a medical practice) · Sep 4, 2026
- 17 CAR § 140-2505(c)-(d) (Additional requirements for delegating the administration of drugs) · Sep 4, 2026
Related Arkansas rules
(a)(1) A patient/provider relationship must be established in accordance with 17 CAR § 140-202(b)(8) before the delivery of services via telemedicine. (2) “Provider” means a person licensed by the Arkansas State Medical Board. (3) A patient completing a medical history online and forwarding it to a provider is not sufficient to establish the relationship, nor does it qualify as store-and-forward technology.
17 CAR § 140-3201(a) (Telemedicine — patient/provider relationship) · verified Sep 4, 2026
(1) The practice of medicine via telemedicine shall be held to the same standards of care as traditional in-person encounters;
17 CAR § 140-3201(b)(1) (Telemedicine — standard of care) · verified Sep 4, 2026
How other states answer this
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- 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
Related Arkansas questions
- Can the pre-treatment exam be done by telehealth in Arkansas?
- Must someone be on site while a patient is treated in Arkansas?
- Can a med spa in Arkansas offer compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide?
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← All Arkansas 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).