Does a med spa have to register or hold a license in Tennessee?
Facility · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Yes — any entity offering cosmetic medical services must register with the Board of Medical Examiners before operating and pay the fee; a physician's own office is exempt unless it holds out as a med spa or over 50% of patients were elective cosmetic.
Tennessee REGISTERS medical spas — uniquely in this corpus. An application, a fee, a named medical director who accepts responsibility in writing, and annual renewal. And the definition reaches a physician’s own practice once more than half its patients come for elective cosmetic work.
Drawn from 9 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1140-07-.02(1); 1140-07-.04(1) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1140-07-.02(2) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1140-07-.01 · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.24(1) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.24(1)(a)–(f) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.01(11) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.24(2) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.24(3) and (4) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.24(5) · Sep 2, 2026
Related Tennessee rules
Tennessee binds sterile compounding to usp and says so twice. “all sterile products shall be prepared in compliance with applicable usp standards for pharmaceutical compounding”, and separately “any facility that compounds sterile products shall comply with applicable usp standards.” Compounded injectables are sterile products, so USP is the operative standard behind any compounded GLP-1 a Tennessee practice administers.
Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1140-07-.02(1); 1140-07-.04(1) · verified Sep 2, 2026
⚠️ and the standard is waivable — by the board, not by the practice. “The Board of Pharmacy, upon a showing of good cause and in the best interest of the public health, safety and welfare, may waive the requirements of any applicable portion of usp standards”, and “all waiver requests … shall be submitted in writing”. a supplier claiming an exemption should be able to produce the Board’s written grant of it.
Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 1140-07-.02(2) · verified Sep 2, 2026
How other states answer this
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Related Tennessee questions
- Who must be the responsible practitioner for a med spa in Tennessee?
- What are the license fees to open a med spa in Tennessee?
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← All Tennessee 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).