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Does a med spa in Virginia need a medical director?

Oversight · part of The Practice Perimeter

Short answer
The cited rules do not settle this — none of them require a medical director; they impose duties on the licensed practitioners inside, such as the physician who performs or supervises laser hair removal, and price an esthetics "Spas" premises license.

Virginia’s procedure-specific rule here is about laser hair removal. It requires a named training curriculum including ten proctored cases, lets the physician delegate to a properly trained person, and defines supervision as “readily available” rather than physically present — with one duty the physician cannot delegate at all.

Drawn from 7 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice

Related Virginia rules

  • A doctor of medicine or osteopathic medicine may perform or supervise laser hair removal only on completing training in six named subjects: skin physiology and histology; skin type and appropriate patient selection; laser safety; operation of the laser device to be used; recognition of and response to potential complications; and a minimum of ten proctored patient cases with demonstrated competency in treating various skin types.

    18 Va. Admin. Code § 85-20-91(A) · verified Sep 2, 2026

  • Doctors who were performing laser hair removal before 7 August 2019 are not required to complete that training. The rule grandfathers experience rather than requiring everyone to re-qualify — so the training file a practice holds may legitimately be empty for a long-serving physician and complete for a recent one.

    18 Va. Admin. Code § 85-20-91(B) · verified Sep 2, 2026

All 7 cited Virginia rules on physician supervision & delegation →

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← All Virginia 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).