Must someone be on site while a patient is treated in Michigan?
Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this generally — they require a physician physically present only where a surgical-instrumentation procedure is delegated to a medical or PA student, and they let boards impose closer supervision for specific acts or individuals.
Surgical instrumentation is the bright line. A physician SHALL delegate an act involving a procedure that requires the use of surgical instrumentation only to an individual licensed under the article. The narrow exceptions — medical students and physician-assistant students — require the procedure to be directly supervised by a physician who is physically present during it.
Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.16215(2) · verified Sep 2, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
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
- Arkansas
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Maryland
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
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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).