GLP-1 Weight Loss Telehealth in Michigan

Michigan is home to roughly 10.0 million people, and about 35.2% of Michigan adults have obesity. Whether treatment is appropriate for any individual is a licensed physician's decision.

Whether you live in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren or anywhere else in Michigan, you can start with an online medical assessment once we open, and a physician licensed in Michigan reviews it and decides whether telehealth treatment is right for you.

Michigan telehealth rules: Michigan allows licensed physicians to prescribe non-controlled medications via telehealth, including compounded GLP-1 medications dispensed by state-licensed pharmacies.

Before your Michigan telehealth assessment. Ask for the treating clinician’s full name and professional credential, and which Michigan license or other legal authorization covers your care. MCL 333.17011(1) uses the words “licensed or otherwise authorized” for the practice of medicine; a license from another state is not, on its own, an explanation of the Michigan authority. Check the clinician through the LARA license search in the verified facts, and ask the program to explain any claimed exception. Tell the clinician where you will be during the visit. If you travel or move, read about telehealth when you cross state lines.

The format must fit your care. For physicians regulated by the Michigan Board of Medicine, rule R 338.2407 requires consent before telehealth treatment and proof of that consent in the medical record. The physician must work within their scope and meet the same standard of care as an in-person service. Ask what the assessment includes, what information is missing and when an in-person examination or testing would be needed. For a different professional credential, ask which board’s rules apply. Bring your current medicines, allergies, medical history and questions; this guide helps you prepare for your first telehealth visit.

Know the follow-up plan. When a physician governed by that rule prescribes through telehealth, they must refer you to a geographically accessible provider if medically necessary, and make follow-up care available or refer you to another provider for it. Before starting, ask whom you can contact, how to reach them and what to do if your needs cannot be met remotely.

Check the pharmacy and payment details. Ask which pharmacy will dispense the prescription and verify its license using the pharmacy search in the verified facts. If a medicine is prescribed, read the prescription label and ask the pharmacist about anything unclear. Before paying for an online program, ask what the price includes, when charges begin and how follow-up, renewal and cancellation work; use these questions to ask before paying for a GLP-1 telehealth subscription.

Michigan does not have a standalone telemedicine act. It has a short telehealth part bolted into the Public Health Code, sections 16283 to 16288, added by 2016 PA 359 and effective March 29, 2017. Its most useful quality is how little it invents: four rules, and then an explicit refusal to go further.

Licensure comes first, and it comes from outside the telehealth part. MCL 333.17011(1) says an individual shall not engage in the practice of medicine unless licensed or otherwise authorized by this article, and MCL 333.17001(1)(j) defines the practice of medicine broadly enough to reach a screen: the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, cure, or relieving of a human disease, ailment, defect, complaint, or other physical or mental condition, by attendance, advice, device, diagnostic test, or other means. Practicing a regulated health profession without a license is a felony under MCL 333.16294. There is no telemedicine registration in Michigan and no limited out-of-state telehealth permit. The exemptions in MCL 333.16171 run to students, military and federal service, disaster and emergency care, epidemic staffing shortages, consultation in an exceptional circumstance, lectures and demonstrations, border residents and visiting athletic teams. None of them is a telehealth exemption.

Getting that license has more than one door, and every door leads to a Michigan license. MCL 333.16186 allows reciprocity for a professional already licensed in another state who substantially meets Michigan requirements, and MCL 333.17011(2) lets the board grant a license on that basis after reviewing the applicant's record of practice, experience and credentials. The better known route is the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, and its recent history is worth knowing. Michigan's compact section was repealed by 2022 PA 38 effective March 28, 2025, and for about a year the code carried no compact section at all. It returned: MCL 333.16189 was re-enacted by 2026 PA 6, House Bill 5455, approved and effective March 26, 2026. The compact language now in the code is candid about what it is and is not. It "creates another pathway for licensure and does not otherwise change a state's existing Medical Practice Act", and it "affirms that the practice of medicine occurs where the patient is located at the time of the physician-patient encounter". Expedited, in other words, not exempt.

The prescribing rule is short enough to read whole. MCL 333.16285(1) lets a health professional providing a telehealth service prescribe a drug if the professional is a prescriber acting within the scope of his or her practice, and, where the drug is a controlled substance, meets this act's separate requirements for that. There is no in-person examination requirement for a non-controlled prescription anywhere in sections 16283 to 16288, and nothing in them requires a pre-existing relationship before a first telehealth encounter. What the statute asks for instead is aftercare. Under subsection (2), the prescriber must provide a referral to other health care services that are geographically accessible to the patient, including emergency services, if he or she considers it medically necessary, and must stay available for follow-up care or refer the patient to another health professional who will provide it.

Consent is the other statutory duty, and it is firmer than the statute alone suggests. MCL 333.16284 says a health professional shall not provide a telehealth service without "directly or indirectly obtaining consent for treatment", and excepts a service provided to an inmate under the jurisdiction of the department of corrections who is housed in a correctional facility. The Board of Medicine rule that implements it, R 338.2407(1) and (2), is more specific than the statute: consent must be obtained before the telehealth service, and proof of it kept in the patient's up-to-date medical record.

Two definitions decide what counts as a visit. MCL 333.16283(c) defines telehealth as the use of electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support or promote long-distance clinical health care, and then borrows "telemedicine" from the insurance code at MCL 500.3476(2)(b), which asks that the professional be able to examine the patient through a HIPAA-compliant "secure interactive audio or video, or both, telecommunications system, or through the use of store and forward online messaging". Interactive audio-only contact and asynchronous store and forward both sit inside that, and Michigan writes no channel out of the definition by name. It is worth being precise about what the Public Health Code borrows: the definition in subsection (2)(b), not the rest of section 3476, which is an insurance provision directed at how insurers cover telemedicine. That section's requirement that telemedicine services be provided by a professional licensed, registered or otherwise authorized in the state where the patient is located governs insurer-covered services. For practice generally the same answer arrives by another road, through MCL 333.17011 and the compact's statement that the practice of medicine occurs where the patient is located.

The limits are where a careful reading should end. MCL 333.16288 says sections 16284 to 16287 do not authorize a health care service otherwise prohibited by law and do not limit one otherwise allowed, and the Michigan Board of Medicine's own rule, R 338.2407(4), requires a licensee providing any telehealth service to act within the scope of the licensee's practice and to "exercise the same standard of care applicable to a traditional, in-person healthcare service". Michigan is relaxed about the channel. It is not relaxed about the care that travels down it.

You can verify any physician's Michigan license at the Michigan Board of Medicine.