Does a med spa in Indiana need a medical director?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Yes — from July 1, 2026 each med spa must have a responsible practitioner (a physician, qualifying APRN, or PA with delegated prescriptive authority), physically present enough to ensure compliance; injectables and energy-device work are practicing medicine.
Indiana defines the practice of medicine broadly enough to reach injectables and energy procedures: prescribing or administering treatment, and procedures that cut, burn or vaporize tissue, are the practice of medicine.
Drawn from 3 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Ind. Code §25-22.5-1-1.1 · Jul 26, 2026
- Ind. Code § 25-8-2-9.5 · Sep 2, 2026
- Ind. Code §25-22.5-12.5-2, §25-22.5-12.5-5 (SEA 282, 2026) · Jul 26, 2026
Related Indiana rules
The “practice of medicine” includes prescribing or administering any form of treatment and procedures that cut, burn, or vaporize tissue by mechanical means, laser, or penetration of the skin — the statutory basis for treating cosmetic injectables and energy-device procedures as medicine.
Ind. Code §25-22.5-1-1.1 · verified Jul 26, 2026
Indiana’s esthetician definition was read in full and is a closed list with a medical carve-out. An esthetician is “a person who engages solely in one (1) or more of the following practices”: “giving facials, applying makeup, and giving skin care”; “beautifying, massaging, or cleaning the body with the use of cosmetic preparations, antiseptics, tonics, lotions, or creams”; and removing superfluous hair “by the use of depilatories, waxing, or tweezers”. The term expressly “does not include performing any of the acts described in subsection (a)… in treating an illness or a disease” No act of puncturing appears — an absence in this definition.
Ind. Code § 25-8-2-9.5 · verified Sep 2, 2026
How other states answer this
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Related Indiana questions
- Who may operate a cosmetic laser in Indiana?
- May an esthetician or laser technician perform microneedling 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).