Is an exam required before a patient can be treated in Tennessee?
Intake · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Yes — before prescribing or dispensing any drug, the physician or a licensed supervisee under protocols must first do and document a history and physical, diagnosis, therapeutic plan and follow-up, subject to narrow exceptions; telemedicine doesn't waive it.
⚠️ Tennessee has one of the strongest examination rules in this corpus, and it is not optional. Rule 0880-02-.14(7) makes it a prima facie violation to prescribe or dispense ANY DRUG without a documented history, examination, diagnosis, discussed plan and follow-up — and says outright that a questionnaire is not an examination. The telemedicine rules then disclaim any effect on that duty rather than relaxing it.
Drawn from 5 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.16 (scope) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.16(1)(a) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.14(7)(a) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.14(7)(c) · Sep 2, 2026
- Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.14(7)(b) · Sep 2, 2026
Related Tennessee rules
Tennessee’s telemedicine rules disclaim any effect on the underlying duty: they are not meant to alter or amend the applicable standard of care in any particular field of medicine, nor to amend any requirement for the establishment of a physician-patient relationship. Remote delivery changes the channel, not the threshold.
Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.16 (scope) · verified Sep 2, 2026
Where a remote evaluation is used the rules put a named person in the room: a FACILITATOR must be physically present with the patient and is responsible for verifying the patient’s identity and location and for the origination, collection and transmission of images or clinical data to the physician performing the evaluation remotely.
Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.16(1)(a) · verified Sep 2, 2026
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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).