Must someone be on site while a patient is treated in Indiana?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — a med spa's responsible practitioner (physician, qualifying APRN, or PA with delegated prescriptive authority) must be physically present enough to ensure compliance, with no stated per-treatment presence rule.
Each med spa must have a responsible practitioner (a physician, a qualifying APRN, or a PA with delegated prescriptive authority) with relevant training, who must be physically present enough to ensure compliance and must ensure every worker is licensed and trained for the services they perform.
Ind. Code §25-22.5-12.5-2, §25-22.5-12.5-5 (SEA 282, 2026) · verified Jul 26, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
The rest of what Indiana says on this
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
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
Related Indiana questions
- Is an exam required before a patient can be treated in Indiana?
- Can the pre-treatment exam be done by telehealth in Indiana?
- Can a med spa in Indiana offer compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide?
Get Indiana changes as they publish
We scan the Indiana legislature and licensing boards daily, plus the FDA and the Federal Register. Free weekly Brief — what changed, in plain language, with the source.
Free · unsubscribe in one click · we never sell your address
← 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).