GLP-1 Weight Loss Telehealth in North Dakota

North Dakota is home to roughly 0.8 million people, and about 36.0% of North Dakotaadults have obesity. Whether treatment is appropriate for any individual is a licensed physician's decision; access should not depend on long waits or expensive in-person visits.

Cities like Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks have great healthcare networks, but obesity-medicine specialists often have months-long waitlists. Telehealth bridges that gap. From your home anywhere in North Dakota, you can complete a medical assessment and be reviewed by a ND-licensed physician, without an office visit, once we open.

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

North Dakota did not write a standalone telehealth act. It wrote telemedicine directly into the physician practice chapter, chapter 43-17 of the North Dakota Century Code, which means the rules for a video visit sit in the same statute that licenses every doctor in the state. Section 43-17-01 defines telemedicine as "the practice of medicine using electronic communication, information technologies, or other means between a licensee in one location and a patient in another location, with or without an intervening health care provider," and says it includes "direct interactive patient encounters, asynchronous store-and-forward technologies, and remote monitoring." Note the word doing the work there: **licensee**, which the same section defines as a physician, resident physician, or physician assistant "licensed to practice in this state." Section 43-17-02.3 removes any doubt about where a telehealth visit legally happens: "The practice of medicine is deemed to occur in the state the patient is located," and a practitioner providing medical care to a patient in North Dakota "shall possess an active North Dakota license for the practitioner's profession." Section 43-17-34 makes practicing medicine in the state without complying with the chapter a class B misdemeanor. The chapter's openings for outside doctors are deliberately narrow: section 43-17-02 exempts physicians licensed in other states "if called in consultation with a person licensed to practice medicine in this state," and sections 43-17-02.3 and 43-17-02.4 add only limited situations such as organ harvest teams, air ambulance crews, one-time consultations or teaching visits of no more than seven days, and visiting sports team physicians. None of those covers routine telehealth care. North Dakota also participates in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (section 43-17-46 governs the compact's fees), which is how many out-of-state telehealth physicians obtain a full North Dakota license quickly. The substance of the telemedicine standard lives in section 43-17-44, and it opens with the principle the rest of the section enforces: "A licensee is held to the same standard of care and same ethical standards, whether practicing traditional in-person medicine or telemedicine." Before diagnosing or treating you, the physician must "establish a bona fide relationship with the patient," and the identity check runs in both directions: the licensee "shall verify the identity of the patient seeking care and shall disclose, and ensure the patient has the ability to verify, the identity and licensure status" of whoever is treating you. If a telehealth service will not tell you which licensed physician is on the other end, that is not a style choice in North Dakota, it is a statutory problem. The most consequential language is about the initial examination. Section 43-17-44 requires an examination or evaluation before a patient is first diagnosed or treated for a condition, and allows it to be "performed entirely through telemedicine, if the examination or evaluation is equivalent to an in-person examination." An exam using "secure videoconferencing or store-and-forward technology for appropriate diagnostic testing" meets that standard. Then the statute draws a line most states leave to board guidance: "An examination or evaluation consisting only of a static online questionnaire or an audio conversation does not meet the standard of care." In plain terms, a form you fill out at checkout is not an examination in North Dakota, and neither is a phone call by itself. The initial visit has to be a real evaluation, which in practice means video. Once that acceptable examination has happened and a patient-licensee relationship exists, the statute loosens deliberately: "subsequent followup care may be provided as deemed appropriate by the licensee," or by a provider the licensee designates in their absence. So ongoing check-ins and message-based follow-up are lawful precisely because a proper first exam anchored them. The section also requires the physician to be able to make "appropriate referrals of patients not amenable to diagnosis or complete treatment through a telemedicine encounter," including anyone who needs emergency or in-person care, and subjects telemedicine practice to all North Dakota laws on medical records. Prescribing gets its own section, 43-17-45. A licensee "who has performed a telemedicine examination or evaluation meeting the requirements of this chapter may prescribe medications according to the licensee's professional discretion and judgment." The statute's hard prescribing limits are aimed at opioids, which may be prescribed through telemedicine only as FDA-approved medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder or to hospital and long-term care patients; a licensee who prescribes any controlled substance must also participate in the state's prescription drug monitoring program. For ordinary non-controlled prescriptions, the gate is the examination itself: a qualifying telemedicine exam first, then the physician's own judgment about whether a prescription is appropriate. That structure, a required real evaluation followed by an independent physician decision, is exactly the model Majesta is built around, and it is how we intend to operate in North Dakota when we open there.

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