GLP-1 Weight Loss Telehealth in Tennessee

Tennessee is home to roughly 7.1 million people, and about 36.4% of Tennesseeadults 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 Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville have great healthcare networks, but obesity-medicine specialists often have months-long waitlists. Telehealth bridges that gap. From your home anywhere in Tennessee, you can complete a medical assessment and be reviewed by a TN-licensed physician, without an office visit, once we open.

Tennessee telehealth rules: Tennessee telehealth practice is governed by Tenn. Code Ann. Section 63-1-155 and related board rules, under which a provider-patient relationship can be established through interactive video or store-and-forward technology without a mandatory in-person encounter, provided the same standard of care is met. Because compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide are non-controlled, no in-person visit is required to begin care in Tennessee.

Tennessee keeps its telehealth law in two layers, and reading only one of them is how people get this state wrong. The statute, Tenn. Code Ann. 63-1-155, reaches the licensed health professions at once: created in 2015 by Public Chapter 261, rewritten in the August 2020 special session by Public Chapter 4, and amended again in 2021 and 2022. It carries its own carve-outs, and subsection (c)(3) is the one to know: the section does not apply to pain management clinics as defined in Tenn. Code Ann. 63-1-301, to "chronic nonmalignant pain treatment," or to "those individuals licensed pursuant to chapter 12 of this title." The second layer is the Board of Medical Examiners' own rule for physicians, Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0880-02-.16, whose current text was filed in August 2016 and took effect that October. The statute is short and permissive. The rule is where the operating conditions live. On licensure the statute's operative clause is subsection (g)(1), and the fragment usually quoted from it is only part of the sentence. As enacted in 2020 it read: "Except as provided in subdivision (g)(2), to practice under this section a healthcare provider must be licensed to practice in this state under this title." Two 2021 acts then widened it. Public Chapter 179 added at the end, immediately before the period, "or be a graduate or student meeting the requirements of subdivision (a)(1)(D)," the supervised graduate and student pathway that same act created. Public Chapter 357 replaced the reference to "subdivision (g)(2)" with "subdivisions (g)(2) and (3)" and added a new (g)(3), under which an individual licensed in another state who would otherwise qualify "may practice telehealth under this section while providing healthcare services on a volunteer basis through a free clinic." So the rule is licensure in Tennessee, with narrow exceptions for supervised trainees and free-clinic volunteers, neither of which describes a commercial telehealth visit. Subsection (g)(2) adds that a physician "must be licensed to practice under chapter 6 or 9 of this title in order to practice telemedicine pursuant to" section 63-6-209(b), "except as otherwise authorized by law or rule." The board rule opens harder still: no person may engage in the practice of medicine, "either in person or remotely using information transmitted electronically or through other means, on a patient within the state of Tennessee," unless licensed by the Board. Paragraph (4) exempts a short list that looks nothing like a commercial practice: out-of-state physicians called in for consultation by a Tennessee licensee, U.S. military physicians, uncompensated informal dialogue between physicians, and rare-disease specialists consulting to research hospitals. If you are looking for a lighter telemedicine registration, Tennessee had one and closed it. The rule says the Board "will no longer issue what was previously termed a" telemedicine license, and physicians who kept the old credential are limited to medical interpretation work and "do not possess prescriptive authority in Tennessee." Paragraph (5) shuts the contracting door as well: physicians contractually obligated to deliver medical services in Tennessee must be licensed here, "regardless of whether such services are in exchange for direct compensation." The board's own telemedicine FAQ states the principle in one line: "The practice of medicine occurs where the patient is located." **No in-person visit is required before care begins.** Subsection (b) says the provider-patient relationship in telemedicine is created by "mutual consent and mutual communication, except in an emergency," that the patient's consent may be expressed or implied, and that the relationship "is not created simply by the receipt of patient health information by a provider unless a prior provider-patient relationship exists." The duties only attach once the provider "undertakes to diagnose or treat the patient" or "participates in the diagnosis or treatment." The board rule says the same thing from the other side: a physician-patient relationship exists "when a physician serves a patient's medical needs whether or not there has been an encounter in person." What the rule adds is mechanics. Where nobody is physically with you, you must use "adequately sophisticated technology" so the remote physician can verify your identity and location "with an appropriate level of confidence," relevant health information has to move "at the level of store-and-forward technology or secure video conferencing," and the physician must disclose "his or her name, current and primary practice location, medical degree and recognized specialty area." A patient under eighteen cannot be treated by telemedicine unless a facilitator is present, "except as otherwise authorized by law," and the board's FAQ adds that the facilitator need not stay "for the entire encounter." The two layers do not describe the visit identically, and the difference is worth knowing before you book one. The statute counts "real time audio, video, or other electronic media and telecommunication technology," plus store-and-forward services, which a 2021 amendment redefined as "asynchronous computer-based communications, which may include the transfer of medical data in an image captured or created by a camera or similar device." The physicians' rule is narrower: "Telemedicine is not an audio only telephone conversation, email/instant messaging conversation or fax." The statute, for its part, instructs that a licensing board "shall not establish a more restrictive standard of professional practice for the practice of telehealth than that specifically authorized by the provider's practice act." Read together, expect a video encounter or a documented asynchronous review by a Tennessee-licensed physician, not a phone call and not an email thread. Prescribing is where Tennessee gets unusually specific, and the specificity is not an in-person requirement. Rule 0880-02-.14(7)(a) makes it a prima facie violation for a physician, "or his/her licensed supervisee pursuant to appropriate protocols or medical orders," to prescribe or dispense any drug "whether in person or by electronic means or over the Internet or over telephone lines" unless four things have first been done and appropriately documented: "Performed an appropriate history and physical examination," a diagnosis based on those examinations and appropriate testing, a therapeutic plan formulated and discussed with the patient, and availability insured for follow-up care. That paragraph is not absolute, and its exceptions are written into its first words. It opens "Except as provided in subparagraph (b)," and subparagraph (b) allows prescribing outside those prerequisites "consistent with sound medical practice, examples of which are as follows," listing admission orders for a newly hospitalized patient, covering for another physician, short-term continuation medications before a new patient's first appointment, established patients the physician judges do not need a new physical examination, and one cross-reference to another paragraph of the same rule. Subparagraph (c) is the sentence this whole category should have framed: it is a prima facie violation to prescribe or dispense to an individual for whom the physician "has not complied with the provisions of this rule based solely on answers to a set of questions," whether the prescription issues directly to the person or "electronically over the Internet or telephone lines." The telemedicine rule then opens by reconciling the two, "Notwithstanding the requirements of Rule 0880-02-.14(7), a physician licensed in Tennessee may engage in the practice of telemedicine under the following circumstances," and lists the conditions above. Read that override narrowly, because the board's own FAQ still sends physicians to Rule 0880-02-.14(7)(a) for what must happen before "prescribing or dispensing any drug to any individual by any means." If what reaches the physician "is not of sufficient quality or does not contain adequate information for the physician to form an opinion," the rule requires them to "declare they cannot form an opinion to make an adequate diagnosis" and to ask for a referral, more data, or evaluation by a local provider. The statute clears the older obstacles out of the path: subsection (d) provides that "Section 63-6-231 and subdivision 63-6-214(b)(21) do not apply to the practice of telemedicine under this section." One Tennessee number gets quoted constantly and filed in the wrong drawer. The requirement of an in-person encounter "within sixteen (16) months prior to the interactive visit" is real, but it is insurance law, not licensing law: it sits inside the definition of provider-based telemedicine at Tenn. Code Ann. 56-7-1003, which decides when a health insurance entity must cover a telemedicine visit, and a 2023 amendment provided that it "does not apply to a patient who is receiving an initial behavioral health evaluation or assessment." That same coverage definition also excludes "An audio-only conversation," email or text messages, faxes, "Remote patient monitoring," and services delivered under a contract between an insurer and an entity that facilitates provider-based telemedicine "as the substantial portion of the entity's business." None of it decides whether a Tennessee-licensed physician may treat you or write a prescription, and on a self-pay visit it does not apply at all. Licensure where the patient sits, a relationship formed remotely by consent and communication, a real clinical evaluation instead of a questionnaire: that is the framework Majesta is building to as we prepare to serve Tennessee.

You can verify any physician's Tennessee license at the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners.