Who may perform the pre-treatment exam in Pennsylvania?
Intake · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — no rule names an exam performer; a physician may delegate a service only if it isn't complex or dangerous enough to need physician-level judgment, and must still judge undue risk for that patient.
A medical service may not be delegated where it is sufficiently complicated, difficult or dangerous that it requires knowledge and skill possessed by medical doctors but not commonly held by non-physicians, or where potential adverse reactions may not be readily apparent to someone without medical doctor training.
49 Pa. Code §18.402(b) · verified Aug 17, 2026 · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
Related Pennsylvania rules
A physician may not delegate a procedure they are not themselves trained, qualified and competent to perform. The ceiling on what can be handed to staff is the delegating physician’s own competence, not the staff member’s.
49 Pa. Code §18.402 · verified Aug 17, 2026 · read at Cornell Legal Information Institute
The physician must determine that no undue risk exists for the specific patient before the delegated service is performed — a patient-by-patient judgment, not a standing clearance for a class of procedure.
49 Pa. Code §18.402(a) · verified Aug 17, 2026 · read at Cornell Legal Information Institute
How other states answer this
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← All Pennsylvania 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).