Who may operate a cosmetic laser in Arkansas?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — they establish cosmetic laser use is the practice of medicine, and a delegating physician must personally diagnose and prescribe, delegate only to trained nonphysician personnel, and stay available for complications.
(3) The board further finds that the use of medical lasers on human beings, for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes, constitutes the practice of medicine.
17 CAR § 140-1601(a)(3) (Laser surgery guidelines) · verified Sep 4, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
Related Arkansas rules
(2) The physician, when delegating these minor procedures, must comply with the following protocol:
17 CAR § 140-1601(b)(2) (Laser surgery guidelines — protocol) · verified Sep 4, 2026
A physician shall not: (1) Transfer his or her responsibility for supervising an unlicensed person in the performance of a delegated medical practice except to another physician who has knowingly accepted that responsibility; (2) Authorize or permit an unlicensed person to whom a medical practice is delegated to delegate the performance of that practice to another person; (3) Delegate to an unlicensed person the administration of anesthesia;
17 CAR § 140-2506(1)-(3) (Physician delegation — prohibitions) · verified Sep 4, 2026
How other states answer this
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
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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).