Is an exam required before a patient can be treated in South Dakota?

Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — South Dakota's telehealth provision only requires that whoever treats the patient be fully licensed here (or employed by a listed facility) and follow their board's rules; it sets no prior good-faith exam requirement.

South Dakota's telehealth chapter states WHO may treat. Any health care professional treating a patient in the state through telehealth shall be fully licensed to practice in the state — or employed by one of the named licensed or accredited facilities — AND subject to any rule adopted by the applicable South Dakota licensing body. Telehealth itself is defined broadly: the use of secure electronic information, imaging and communication technologies by a health care professional to deliver health care services to a patient, INCLUDING interactive audio-video, interactive audio with store and forward, store-and-forward technology, and remote patient monitoring. Because the operative requirements are pushed to the licensing body's rules, these claims do not themselves fix an examination requirement; what they do fix is the standard the board measures against — professional incompetence is a deviation from the statewide standard of competence, being the minimum degree of skill and knowledge necessary to perform the characteristic tasks of a physician in at least a reasonably effective way.