Can a nurse practitioner treat without a supervising physician in Indiana?
Who treats · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
No — an APRN (other than a certified registered nurse anesthetist) must collaborate with a licensed practitioner under a practice agreement or hospital-granted privileges, and prescriptive authority comes only through the Board of Nursing program.
An advanced practice registered nurse may prescribe drugs, including controlled substances, only under authority granted through a program the Board of Nursing establishes. That authority expires on October 31 of the odd-numbered year following the year it was granted or renewed, and is renewable indefinitely for successive two-year periods.
Ind. Code §25-23-1-19.5(b) and (c) · verified Sep 1, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
Related Indiana rules
⚠️ That authority is NOT independent. An advanced practice registered nurse shall operate in collaboration with a licensed practitioner as evidenced by a practice agreement, or under privileges granted by a hospital governing board setting out how the nurse and a licensed practitioner will cooperate, coordinate and consult. Certified registered nurse anesthetists are outside this section.
Ind. Code §25-23-1-19.4(a) and (c) · verified Sep 1, 2026
And the collaboration bounds what may be prescribed. Prescriptive authority may be granted only within the scope of practice of the advanced practice registered nurse AND the scope of the licensed collaborating health practitioner — so the collaborator’s specialty is a ceiling on the nurse’s prescribing, not merely a formality on a signature page.
Ind. Code §25-23-1-19.6(c) · verified Sep 1, 2026
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Related Indiana questions
- Can a registered nurse inject Botox or filler in Indiana?
- Can a physician assistant inject or prescribe in Indiana?
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← All Indiana 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).