Georgia Med Spa SOPs: What Your Policy Manual Must Include

Most state compliance guides start from the premise that nobody is looking. In Georgia that premise is wrong in a checkable way. Before a single patient walks in, a med spa with an APRN has lodged a document with the Composite Medical Board describing what that APRN may do, and one with a laser has lodged a consulting physician and the protocols those services run on.

That reframes the binder. A Georgia manual is the operational layer that has to stay consistent with filings already made, and to keep being consistent as the menu grows past what those filings describe. Writing the procedures is covered in our complete guide to med spa standard operating procedures; governing the binder as an artefact is handled in our medical spa policies and procedures manual guide.

Does Georgia Require a Med Spa to Have Written SOPs?

No — no Georgia statute or Board rule orders a med spa to keep an SOP manual, and there is no med spa facility licence under which anyone could grade one. Georgia still comes closer than most states, because two of its mandatory instruments are themselves protocol documents that must be filed before work begins. The manual's job is to keep those instruments coherent with each other, which is useful but not a legal duty.

The two written documents Georgia does insist on

The first is the nurse protocol agreement, required under O.C.G.A. § 43-34-25 for an APRN performing delegated medical acts and implemented by Board Rule Chapter 360-32. It must exist in writing, be signed by a named delegating physician, and be filed with the Board before the APRN practises under it. The second is the physician assistant job description, which the Board approves and which sets the outer edge of that PA's work.

The third, if you own a laser

Cosmetic laser facilities add a layer most owners do not expect. Under the Cosmetic Laser Services Act and Board Rule Chapter 360-35, a facility keeps a consulting physician relationship on file with the Board — name, address, credentials — together with the treatment protocols the laser services run on. Sit with the consequence: a regulator can compare what you filed against what your staff are doing without ever asking for a binder.

Which Georgia Boards Hold Your Documents, and Which One Holds Your Protocols?

Three licensing boards and one drug agency, and only one of them — the Georgia Composite Medical Board — actually holds copies of your operating documents. Putting this map on one page early is worth more than it sounds, because Georgia staff routinely attribute a duty to the board that did not impose it.

The Georgia Composite Medical Board

It licenses physicians and physician assistants, approves PA job descriptions, receives nurse protocol agreements, issues the senior and assistant cosmetic laser practitioner licences, and disciplines licensees under O.C.G.A. § 43-34-8. It also issues the position statements Georgia med spas have had to react to most recently. If one regulator's view of your practice matters most, it is this one.

The Georgia Board of Nursing

The Georgia Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses. Note the split that confuses new owners: an APRN's licence comes from this board, but the authority to perform delegated medical acts arrives through a nurse protocol agreement governed by the Composite Medical Board. Two regulators, two files, and a disciplinary problem can start in either.

The Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers

Estheticians and cosmetologists are licensed by the Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers, which sits in the Secretary of State's professional licensing structure rather than with the medical board. The name reflects a merger of the formerly separate cosmetology and barbering boards, and older material still refers to a standalone Board of Cosmetology. Scope is set at O.C.G.A. § 43-10-1, which we return to because it is unusually explicit.

The Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency

GDNA is not a licensing board but an inspection and investigation body for controlled substances, operating alongside the federal DEA. A practice storing or administering scheduled drugs needs a state registration in addition to the DEA one, tied to the practice address. An aesthetics-only practice that never touches a scheduled drug generally stays outside it. Our guide to opening a med spa in Georgia sequences those registrations.

What Must a Georgia Med Spa Document About Delegation and Supervision?

The instrument, the filing, and the frequency — in that order, and Georgia is one of the few states where the third element is written down. A delegation policy naming an instrument but no cadence is only half a Georgia policy, because the Board has described what the delegating physician should be doing and how often.

The nurse protocol agreement, and what it has to define

Our Georgia research sets out what a workable agreement defines: the parties with licence numbers, the scope of delegated services and any prescriptive authority, the drug categories covered, the practice settings, the chart review plan, the renewal schedule, and termination. File it before practice begins, and file updates when scope, delegating physician or setting changes. The anatomy is in our Georgia nurse protocol agreement guide.

The oversight cadence, which is the part most binders omit

Board rules and the Composite Medical Board's May 7, 2026 position statement describe concrete expectations for a delegating physician: direct on-site observation of the APRN at least annually, quarterly review of medical records, and availability for immediate consultation, with responsibility on that physician for delegated acts being clinically appropriate and adequately documented. Turn each into a dated artefact — an undated observation did not happen, evidentially speaking.

The tighter cadence for controlled substances

Where a controlled substance is prescribed under a nurse protocol, our Georgia protocol research describes a materially tighter pattern: the patient evaluated by the delegating physician, or a physician they designate, at least quarterly, with that physician reviewing and signing one hundred percent of controlled-substance patients' records on the same rhythm. Work that against a real weight-management panel before promising it in a policy — it is a staffing commitment, not a paperwork one.

The physician assistant file

A PA works under a job description approved by the Composite Medical Board and a named supervising physician. Board rules let that physician be away from the building for tasks inside the approved description where immediate consultation is available, but require direct physical supervision for anything outside it. The job description is the boundary, so adding a treatment means checking the approval before the first patient rather than after the first complaint.

The registered nurse, and the individualised order

An RN in Georgia has no prescriptive authority and injects on someone else's order. The Board's IV hydration and therapy position statement is the clearest recent account of what that requires: a completed history and physical by a physician, nurse practitioner or PA; a valid individualised order; and an express rejection of standing or menu-based orders as a substitute. In walk-in, mobile or drip-bar settings an RN or LPN may not be the only licensed professional evaluating and treating.

What Must Be Documented About the Medical Director Relationship in Georgia?

Start by deleting the job title. "Medical director" appears in no Georgia statute; what Georgia names are a delegating physician, a supervising physician and a consulting physician, and a full-service med spa usually needs more than one documented at once. The file that matters shows the physician doing things on dates, not a title and a monthly invoice.

Three named roles, possibly the same person

The delegating physician stands behind an APRN under a nurse protocol. The supervising physician stands behind a PA under an approved job description. The consulting physician stands behind a laser facility. One physician can hold all three, and usually does — but the manual should say which role covers which service, because the roles have different rules. Our Georgia medical director agreement guide covers the contract sitting over all three.

The compensation question Georgia answered in 2026

Georgia's ownership position is unusual: the standalone corporate practice of medicine statute was repealed in 1982, so non-physician ownership of the business entity is not barred outright, though shares in a professional corporation rendering medical services may be issued only to persons licensed in that profession (O.C.G.A. § 14-7-5). What constrains APRN-led practices instead is § 43-34-25(n), barring a physician from being the employee of an APRN the physician must supervise. The May 7, 2026 position statement read that broadly, reaching compensation paid by an APRN-owned company to a physician acting as delegating physician through a third-party matching arrangement. The Board acknowledged significant concerns on May 26, 2026, so our Georgia regulatory changes guide tracks where it stands.

What the oversight evidence file should contain

Build a dated ledger rather than a folder of agreements. Protocol approvals with version numbers and signature dates. Chart review logs naming reviewer, date, number of charts and findings. The annual on-site observation note. Sign-off on each new service before launch. Correspondence showing consultation on a real clinical question. Then the payment path: direct, documented, and not a share of clinical revenue.

Posting and public identification

Georgia also expects patients to be able to identify who stands behind their care. Board-facing material describes public posting of the delegating or supervising physician with contact information, and the laser rules require facility signage naming the consulting physician with an emergency contact, board certification and specialty, or whoever is currently supervising. Make replacing that signage a checklist item when the physician changes.

What Patient-Record and Consent Documentation Does Georgia Require, and What Is the Retention Period?

Ten years — and, the part Georgia practices get wrong, the clock runs from the date each item was created rather than from the last visit. O.C.G.A. § 31-33-2 requires a provider with custody and control of an evaluation, diagnosis, prognosis, laboratory report or biopsy slide in a patient's record to retain that item for not less than ten years from the date it was created. The section is titled "Retention of records; furnishing of records to patients, providers, or other authorized persons" in the current Georgia Code.

Why the per-item trigger changes how you destroy records

Most retention policies are built around a last-encounter date, because that is how most states write the rule. Georgia's formulation means one chart can hold items with retention dates a decade apart: a weight-management patient treated across three years has an initial evaluation ageing out three years before the final titration note. A schedule running at chart level will either destroy items early or hold everything for the life of the oldest relationship. Manage retention at document level instead.

What we could verify, and what we could not

We could confirm the ten-year period, the per-item creation trigger, a thirty-day window for furnishing requested records, and limited exceptions for a provider who retired from or sold a practice after notifying patients, and for hospitals. What we could not find in § 31-33-2 is a minor-specific extension, and some Georgia material, including older pages on this site, states one. We will not print a year count we cannot source.

What a Georgia aesthetic chart has to contain

No state chart template exists, so assemble it from the duties generating it. Per encounter: the history and physical with finding and plan, signed and identifying the clinician's licence; the individualised order naming product and dose, or device and parameters; the signed consent; who delivered the treatment and under which instrument; lot number and expiry, or device settings; and any complication with the response.

Consent, photography and the telehealth variant

No Georgia statute we could find prescribes what a med spa consent form must say, and we will not invent a list. General informed-consent law governs: one written form per service, covering the risks, the benefits, the alternatives and the option of declining, naming the product used and flagging any off-label application. Image use in marketing takes its own dated authorisation, revocable and stored apart from the treatment consent. Board Rule 360-3-.07 allows the relationship to be established electronically at the in-person standard of care.

What Must Be Documented About Drug Handling, Storage and Disposal?

Most of this layer is federal and identical everywhere, and a Georgia manual gains credibility by saying so — but three pieces are local: the GDNA state registration, the quarterly controlled-substance review running through the nurse protocol, and Georgia's permit requirement for out-of-state pharmacies shipping in. Weight the pages accordingly, because inspection attention follows the local pieces.

Sourcing and the purchase record

Buy through the manufacturer or an authorised wholesaler on the practice's own prescriber account, and keep invoices with the products they cover. Record the verification step as a step — who confirmed the distributor's authorisation, on what date. Compounded preparations must come from a licensed 503A pharmacy or 503B outsourcing facility, with invoices and lot numbers retained.

Peptides, research chemicals and the failure with no defence

The sharpest sourcing risk in the current Georgia market is not an expired vial but a product that was never lawfully dispensable. Substances sold as research chemicals or labelled not for human use are unapproved new drugs once marketed for human use, and they come from suppliers that are not licensed pharmacies. A practice injecting one has no lawful prescription behind it, leaving the delegating physician nothing to argue. Write the prohibition into the sourcing policy by name.

Controlled substances, GDNA and the monitoring database

If the menu includes scheduled drugs, the practice needs a GDNA state registration alongside its DEA registration, both tied to the practice address and both in the manual with renewal dates. Georgia's prescription drug monitoring programme covers Schedule II through V and is administered by the Department of Public Health. GLP-1 receptor agonists are not controlled substances and sit outside it; phentermine is Schedule IV and does not. Our Georgia GLP-1 compliance guide separates the two programmes.

Storage, cold chain, lot tracking and disposal

Put each product's labelled temperature range into the policy in figures, name the person who takes the daily reading, and make the excursion rule concrete: at what temperature, for how long, quarantine follows; who then decides whether stock is used or destroyed; and which log records that decision. Keep a lot register searchable from patient to product and from a recalled lot back to the patients who received it, since a recall arrives as a lot number and nothing else.

What Training and Competency Records Should a Georgia Med Spa Keep Per Role?

Georgia requires far less training documentation than national templates claim, with one large exception they usually miss: the cosmetic laser practitioner licence is a state credential, not an in-house competency sign-off. Separating the licence layer from the competency layer is most of the work here.

The licence layer, which is citable

Every clinical person must hold a current Georgia licence authorising what they do, and that sentence has more moving parts here than elsewhere. A physician and PA from the Composite Medical Board. An RN, LPN or APRN from the Georgia Board of Nursing. An esthetician from the Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers. And, for anyone operating a cosmetic laser who is not a physician, PA or APRN, a senior or assistant cosmetic laser practitioner licence.

The laser tier, which changes who may be alone in the room

The two-tier laser licence carries a supervision consequence that belongs in the staffing policy rather than the training file. An assistant laser practitioner works under on-site supervision by a physician or a senior laser practitioner, with laser hair removal and pulsed-light treatments excepted; a senior practitioner may work under the consulting physician's protocols without that presence. Our Georgia laser safety guide sets out the licence requirements and the ANSI and OSHA layer on top.

What each personnel file should hold

Give every person the same spine: current licence with issuing board, verification date and expiry; the instrument they work under; scope boundaries written in the negative as well as the positive; training evidence; competency sign-offs with named verifiers; and a signed acknowledgement of the current manual version. In Georgia the negative boundary earns its space — an esthetician's file should state on its face that the licence authorises no lasers and no injections.

What Incident and Adverse-Event Documentation Is Expected?

We could not establish a general Georgia adverse-event filing duty for a med spa from a source we would rely on, and we will not assert one in either direction — but the documentation still matters, because in Georgia the incident is read back through the delegating physician's oversight duties. That is a different exposure from a filing deadline, and in some ways a heavier one.

Why the record outlives the event

When a Georgia complaint reaches the Composite Medical Board, the question is rarely only what went wrong clinically. It is whether the act was properly delegated, whether the instrument covered it, whether the oversight cadence was met, and whether the record shows all three. So the internal form should capture the authorising instrument alongside the clinical facts.

The internal incident form

Design one form and use it every time, including for complaints involving no clinical harm, since a pattern of minor complaints is itself a finding. Capture the date and patient identifier; product and lot, or device and settings; the clinician and the instrument authorising them; what was observed; what was done; who was notified; the outcome; and the change the debrief produced.

The reporting routes that apply regardless

Three exist independently of Georgia law and are regularly missed. Serious adverse drug reactions go to the FDA's MedWatch programme. Device-related injuries run through the federal device reporting pathway. Your liability carrier's notice window is usually the tightest, often measured in days from awareness. Map all three with the actual submission routes, and put the open Georgia question to counsel — recording the answer with its date.

What Should a Georgia Med Spa's Emergency Protocols Cover?

The complications your own menu can produce, each on a single page a frightened person can follow — and none of it is Georgia law, which the manual should say plainly rather than dress up as a mandate. The Georgia connection is indirect but real: an emergency mishandled by a delegate becomes a supervision question, decided on the facts afterwards.

The complications a Georgia menu generates

One page per complication your own menu can actually produce, not a general chapter. Vascular occlusion from filler needs the recognition signs, the step sequence, where hyaluronidase is kept and when it expires, and the moment the patient leaves for a hospital instead. Anaphylaxis needs epinephrine named with its dose and its shelf. After that: laser burns and ocular injury, neuromodulator spread, peel complications, vasovagal syncope, and for an IV service infiltration and fluid overload.

The Georgia staffing question inside every emergency page

Here is the local wrinkle. Georgia's supervision rules contemplate a delegating physician available for immediate consultation rather than physically present, and the laser article allows a consulting physician practising at a distance. Both are lawful; neither is a plan for a time-critical complication. So each emergency page needs a line stating who is physically in the building when this service is delivered.

The kit, the log and the drill

Specify emergency equipment by contents, location and check schedule, with a named owner and a log recording every check — expired hyaluronidase is the aesthetic equivalent of an empty extinguisher. Run drills and record the date, scenario, participants, what went badly and what changed. State plainly which complications the practice deliberately does not stock for. Our med spa emergency protocol checklist has the equipment lists.

The Section-by-Section Georgia Med Spa SOP Manual Outline

Seven parts, each policy named, with the filed instruments at the very front — because in Georgia the first thing a regulator can compare your practice against is a document you already gave them. Adapt everything after Part 1 to your service mix, but do not move Part 1.

Part 1 — Filed instruments and the board map

The nurse protocol agreement as filed, with every update in date order. The Board-approved PA job description. The consulting physician filing and laser treatment protocols. Entity formation documents and current registration. Then a one-page board map: Composite Medical Board, Board of Nursing, State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers, GDNA — and which matters each one takes.

Part 2 — Delegation, supervision and the service matrix

The medical director agreement covering the delegating, supervising and consulting roles, with the payment path documented. The oversight ledger: chart review logs, annual on-site observation notes, protocol approvals with versions. The controlled-substance quarterly evaluation and record-review schedule. The individualised order framework for RN-administered treatment. The service-by-licence matrix, with the authorising instrument in its own column.

Part 3 — The patient record

Chart contents by service type. The history and physical policy, including the telehealth variant under Rule 360-3-.07. Order documentation. Treatment records carrying product, lot, expiry, device parameters and performing clinician. Photography standards. Retention written at document level with the ten-year per-item rule cited and the minor-record question flagged rather than guessed. Records access and the thirty-day furnishing window, plus chart custody on departure or sale.

Part 4 — Consent, privacy and communication

Service-specific consent forms with off-label disclosure. Separate revocable marketing authorisations for images. HIPAA notice of privacy practices, a named privacy officer, breach response and business associate agreements. Telehealth consent and identity verification. Advertising review, which in Georgia runs through the Board's investigations and discipline rules at Chapter 360-3 and the disciplinary grounds at O.C.G.A. § 43-34-8, on top of the federal FTC layer — our Georgia advertising rules guide works through both.

Part 5 — Drugs, devices and waste

Inventory categories and authorised sourcing with purchase records and the named verification step. The compounded preparation policy with 503A and 503B sourcing. The explicit prohibition on research-chemical and not-for-human-use products. Storage, security and cold chain with logs and a written excursion rule. DEA and GDNA registrations with renewal dates. Lot tracking and recall. Device maintenance and, for Class 3B or Class 4 lasers, the laser safety officer designation. Sharps, regulated waste and expired stock destruction.

Part 6 — Personnel, training and competency

Role definitions with scope stated positively and negatively. Licence verification schedule by issuing board. Cosmetic laser practitioner licensure tracking and the on-site supervision rule for assistants. Orientation and manual acknowledgement. Device and product training evidence. Competency verification with named verifiers and event-based review triggers. Continuing education tracking. A credentialing binder producible on the day rather than reconstructed over a week.

Part 7 — Safety, emergencies, incidents and review

Emergency protocols by complication, each naming who is in the building. Equipment contents, location and check logs. Drill records. Infection control, sharps handling and instrument reprocessing. The reporting map covering MedWatch, device reporting and carrier notification, with the open Georgia filing question flagged. The internal incident form and complaint log. And version control for the manual itself, with superseded versions archived so the practice can show what governed care on any past date.

How the Policies Change by Role: Physician, APRN, PA, RN, LPN, Esthetician, Medical Assistant

Seven licence categories, three licensing boards and four different authorising instruments — so a single shared staff policy will be wrong for most of the people reading it. Give each role its own page, and write the negative boundary as explicitly as the positive one.

Physician: the origin of every delegation

The MD or DO is where authority begins and the only person who can hold the delegating, supervising or consulting role. The file carries the Georgia licence with verification date, the entity documents, and the oversight ledger — which protects that physician's own licence as much as the practice, since the exposure in a delegation case lands there. The page should also state the services the physician personally performs.

Advanced practice registered nurse: broad authority, filed boundaries

An APRN may evaluate, prescribe and inject within a nurse protocol agreement filed with the Composite Medical Board, and may hold senior cosmetic laser practitioner licensure on top. The boundary is the filed protocol: a treatment outside it is not authorised, however competent the APRN. The page carries the Board of Nursing licence, the current filed protocol and every update, the prescriptive authority and drug categories, and the oversight cadence with its evidence.

Physician assistant: the job description is the edge

A PA performs services within a job description approved by the Composite Medical Board and delegated by a named supervising physician. That physician need not be in the building for tasks inside the approval where immediate consultation is available, but must be physically present for anything outside it. Record the supervising physician, the approved description with its approval date, any additional duty requests, and the review pattern making the supervision real rather than nominal.

Registered nurse: administration under an individualised order

An RN administers and injects on a valid individualised order from a prescriber who evaluated the patient, and holds no prescriptive authority. State the boundary alongside the capability so nobody reads it as a comment on skill: no evaluation, no product or dose selection, no candidacy decision, and no menu-based standing order in place of a patient-specific one. In an IV setting, add that the RN cannot be the only licensed professional evaluating and treating.

Licensed practical nurse: a directed scope supervision does not widen

An LPN works within a directed scope under appropriate supervision, and the Board's IV position statement contemplates LPN administration on that basis. Practices sometimes assume a physician in the building enlarges what the licence permits; it does not, because the limit sits on the licence rather than on the arrangement. Write this page mostly in the negative, and keep aesthetic injection off it.

Esthetician: the clearest statutory boundary in Georgia

This is the page Georgia owners most often get wrong, and also the easiest to write correctly, because the statute is unusually blunt. O.C.G.A. § 43-10-1 defines esthetics as skin care and grooming, then states that esthetics does not include the diagnosis, treatment or therapy of any dermatological condition, medical aesthetics, or the use of lasers. Our Georgia esthetician scope guide and microneedling and PRP scope guide take the treatments one at a time.

Cosmetic laser practitioner: a Georgia-only role

Georgia is one of the few states with a dedicated operator licence for cosmetic lasers, issued in two tiers by the Composite Medical Board under the Cosmetic Laser Services Act, with § 43-34-244 setting out the levels. Nonablative cosmetic light-based services under that licence are statutorily framed as something other than the practice of medicine; ablative resurfacing was not carved out and remains medical.

Medical assistant: support only

There is no Georgia licence for a medical assistant, so the role has no scope of its own and nothing can be delegated into it that requires one. The work is supervised support: rooming, vitals, help with documentation, stock handling. Write the page as a list of exclusions — no injecting, no energy device, no assessment, no treatment decision — because the Board treats delegating injections to unlicensed staff as unprofessional conduct, and that finding lands on the physician.

The Documentation Failures That Most Often Surface in Georgia Complaints and Inspections

Georgia's characteristic failures are drift failures rather than absence failures — the document exists, it was filed, and then the practice grew past it. That follows directly from a filing-based system, which is why an annual reconciliation belongs in the manual as a scheduled task with a named owner.

The menu that outgrew the filed protocol

The most common pattern: a nurse protocol agreement filed when the practice offered neurotoxin and filler, and a menu that now includes IV therapy, weight management and an energy device. The protocol was accurate the day it was filed and inaccurate ever since. Nobody decided to break a rule; the menu simply moved. Fix it with a standing rule that no service launches until the instrument covering it has been checked and, where needed, refiled.

The oversight that happened but was never written down

Second: a physician who genuinely reviews charts and visits the practice, with no ledger showing it. Georgia's cadence expectations are specific enough that "we do that regularly" is a weak answer, and an undated practice is indistinguishable from an absent one once the matter is in writing.

The treatment delivered by the wrong licence

Third, and most serious: a treatment performed by someone whose licence does not reach it — an esthetician on a laser, an unlicensed assistant with a syringe, an assistant laser practitioner working alone on a service needing on-site supervision. O.C.G.A. § 43-34-22 prohibits practising medicine without a licence and § 43-34-42 makes it a felony, punishable by $1,000.00 per violation, two to five years, or both.

Citation Hygiene: The O.C.G.A. Numbers Georgia Binders Still Get Wrong

Georgia recodified its Medical Practice Act effective July 1, 2009, and a surprising amount of med spa compliance material — including, until recently, pages on this site — still cites the pre-2009 numbering. Check any section against the current code before it goes into a policy. Here is the short list accounting for most of the errors we have had to correct.

Nurse protocols: cite § 43-34-25, not § 43-34-23

Delegation of medical acts to an advanced practice registered nurse, and the conditions of a nurse protocol, sit at O.C.G.A. § 43-34-25 in the current Georgia Code. The most persuasive confirmation is the Board's own rulebook: Chapter 360-32 is titled "Nurse Protocol Agreements Pursuant to O.C.G.A. Section 43-34-25". Older material — including an earlier version of our own coverage — pointed at § 43-34-23. A section bearing that number exists in the current code, but we could not read its text and will not characterise it.

Discipline: cite § 43-34-8, not § 43-34-9

The Board's authority to refuse a licence or issue discipline sits at O.C.G.A. § 43-34-8 in the current code, under the heading "Authority to refuse license, certificate, or permit or issue discipline". Material citing § 43-34-9 for the grounds of discipline is using the pre-recodification number. Our vetted dataset also records an administrative fine of up to $3,000.00 per violation — a figure from our own research rather than statutory text we read.

Unlicensed practice penalty: cite § 43-34-42, not § 43-34-26

The penalty provision is O.C.G.A. § 43-34-42, in Article 2 of the current code, making unlicensed practice a felony with a $1,000.00 per-violation fine, two to five years' imprisonment, or both, and a $5,000.00 fine for forged credentials or a false name. Older material — including an older page of ours — cites § 43-34-26 and calls the offence a misdemeanour of a high and aggravated nature. That does not match § 43-34-42.

Corporate practice: § 43-34-37 was repealed in 1982

Georgia's standalone corporate practice of medicine prohibition, formerly at O.C.G.A. § 43-34-37, was repealed in 1982, and no standalone statute has banned corporate medical practice since. What constrains ownership today is the shareholder rule at § 14-7-5, the supervision-employment bar at § 43-34-25(n), and the licensure provisions — worked through in our Georgia med spa ownership guide.

What Georgia Requires, and What Is Only Best Practice

Keep this separation visible, ideally as a column in the policy index. It is the fastest way to show a reader the document was written by somebody who checked, and it stops staff treating every line as equally load-bearing.

Requirements we can cite, re-verified against the current Georgia Code this run: a nurse protocol agreement for an APRN performing delegated medical acts (O.C.G.A. § 43-34-25, implemented by Board Rule Chapter 360-32); a licensure scheme for cosmetic laser services with two operator levels and a consulting physician (§§ 43-34-240 to 43-34-253, levels at § 43-34-244, Rule Chapter 360-35); retention of record items for not less than ten years from the date each was created, with a thirty-day furnishing window (§ 31-33-2); the prohibition on practising medicine without a licence (§ 43-34-22) and its felony penalty (§ 43-34-42); and the Board's disciplinary authority (§ 43-34-8).

Requirements from our vetted Georgia dataset, last reviewed 21 July 2026, with primary-source citations we did not re-open this run: the definition of esthetics and its exclusion of medical aesthetics and lasers (§ 43-10-1); the professional corporation shareholder restriction (§ 14-7-5); the bar on a physician being the employee of a supervised APRN (§ 43-34-25(n)); the delegating physician's annual on-site observation and quarterly record review (Rules 360-32-.04 and .05, 360-5-.04); the consulting physician filing and on-site supervision of assistant laser practitioners (Rules 360-35-.05 and .06); telemedicine held to the in-person standard of care (Rule 360-3-.07); and the Board's IV Hydration and Therapy position statement of 7 May 2026.

From our own Georgia coverage only, not re-verified against the code text: the prescription drug monitoring programme administered by the Department of Public Health (§ 16-13-57); the non-resident pharmacy permit (§ 26-4-114.1); the quarterly patient evaluation and full record review for controlled-substance patients under a nurse protocol; and the $3,000.00 administrative fine ceiling under § 43-34-8. Confirm each with counsel before it becomes the basis of a staffing commitment.

Best practice, not a Georgia mandate: the manual itself; the job title "medical director"; cold chain logging; a delegation matrix in writing; lot tracking and recall procedure; competency verification on a schedule; device-specific training certification; an internal incident form and complaint log; emergency kit contents and drill frequency; consent contents beyond what general informed-consent law already demands; retention past the ten-year floor; and any state adverse-event filing, which we could neither confirm nor rule out. Each is worth doing. None belongs behind the words "Georgia requires".

Summary: The Georgia Documentation Layer in One Page

Georgia will not ask to see your manual. It has no med spa licence to suspend and no facility register to fall off. What it has instead is copies — of the protocol your APRN works under, of the job description behind your PA, of the laser protocols and the consulting physician standing behind them. The distinctive Georgia risk is that the state's copy describes a practice you stopped being some time ago.

So build in that order. Filed instruments at the front, reconciled against the live menu on a schedule with a named owner. A delegating physician whose oversight carries dates. A retention schedule running at document level. A service matrix that survives the next treatment you add. Then take the unsettled parts to a Georgia healthcare attorney. More guides sit on our Georgia med spa compliance hub, alongside our Georgia regulatory profile and the Georgia regulations page.

This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or medical advice. Georgia aesthetic practices are regulated primarily through the Georgia Composite Medical Board, with the Georgia Board of Nursing, the Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers and the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency each holding part of the picture. Where a source could not be re-verified from the network used to prepare this page, we say so in the text rather than smoothing it over. Consult a Georgia healthcare attorney before applying any of this to your practice.

Frequently Asked Questions