Does a med spa in Michigan need a medical director?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Not directly — no cited rule requires a medical director title, and Michigan licenses no med spa as such. But delegated acts must be supervised by the delegating licensee, and laser dermatological procedures must be under a licensed physician's supervision.
Michigan is a delegation-permissive state with real limits inside it. A licensee may delegate to a licensed or unlicensed individual qualified by education, training or experience — but only where the act is within the scope of the licensee’s own profession and is performed under the licensee’s supervision — and may not delegate at all where the act requires the education, skill and judgment of the licensee. Separately, the esthetics license is capped by statute at the stratum corneum, so what may be delegated to a licensee is not the same question as what that license itself reaches.
Drawn from 10 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(1) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(1) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(2) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(5) and (6) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(7) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.1210(3) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.1210(2)(b), (2)(e) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.1201(j), (u) · Sep 2, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16276(5)(c) (“Supervision” defined for laser procedures) · Sep 8, 2026
- Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16276(1)–(3), (5)(b) · Sep 8, 2026
Related Michigan rules
A licensee may delegate to a licensed or unlicensed individual who is otherwise qualified by education, training, or experience the performance of selected acts, tasks, or functions — provided they fall within the scope of practice of the licensee’s own profession and are performed under the licensee’s supervision. Michigan does not restrict delegation to licensed people the way several states in this corpus do. (Michigan Compiled Laws complete through PA 12 of 2025.)
Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(1) · verified Sep 2, 2026 · read at Internet Archive snapshot — evidence of a page, not the current rule
⚠️ AND HERE IS THE LIMIT THAT DOES THE WORK. A licensee SHALL NOT delegate an act, task, or function if, under standards of acceptable and prevailing practice, it requires the level of education, skill, and judgment required of the licensee. The test is the act’s difficulty, not the delegate’s job title — so a well-trained unlicensed person is eligible for some things and no amount of training makes them eligible for others.
Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(1) · verified Sep 2, 2026 · read at Internet Archive snapshot — evidence of a page, not the current rule
How other states answer this
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- 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 Michigan questions
- What must the supervising physician actually do in Michigan?
- Who may operate a cosmetic laser in Michigan?
- Can a medical assistant give injections in Michigan?
- May an esthetician or laser technician perform microneedling in Michigan?
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← All Michigan 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).