Who can own a med spa in Georgia? Ownership rules by license type

Key takeaways

Georgia repealed its corporate practice of medicine statute in 1982, but the restriction survives through the licensure statutes and the Professional Corporations Act.

A Georgia-licensed physician can own the professional corporation that delivers Botox, fillers, and laser treatment.

A non-physician can own the business side through a management services organization, but not equity in the clinical entity.

Nurse practitioner and physician assistant ownership is unresolved at the Georgia Composite Medical Board, and the board moved twice in May 2026.

A registered nurse can hold equity in the management company, but an RN can only treat on an individualized order.

Who can own a med spa in Georgia has two answers, because a Georgia med spa is usually two companies. A Georgia-licensed physician owns the professional corporation that delivers the medicine. A non-physician owns the management company beside it.

Georgia repealed its express ban on the corporate practice of medicine in 1982. The rule survived anyway, carried by the statutes that reserve medicine to licensed people and by the Professional Corporations Act.

Ownership is the first decision in how to start a med spa, because it fixes your entity structure before you file a single form. Get it wrong and you rebuild the company later, usually under a board complaint.

Nurse practitioner ownership is where published advice splits, and where Georgia itself has not landed. The Georgia Composite Medical Board moved twice on the surrounding rules in May 2026. Below is what each license type can hold, which path it takes, and where the law genuinely stops.

Who can own a med spa in Georgia, by license type

Only a Georgia-licensed physician can own a med spa’s clinical practice outright. Non-physicians own the business side through an MSO, and NP or PA ownership is unresolved.

That split comes from two places in Georgia law. O.C.G.A. §14-7-4 governs the professional corporation, and the licensure statutes in Title 43 decide who may practice medicine at all.

Section 14-7-4 says a professional corporation may practice a profession only through officers, employees, and agents licensed to practice it. At least one director and the president must hold that license.

For a med spa, the profession is medicine. Botox, dermal fillers, and laser resurfacing are medical acts, so the entity delivering them is practicing medicine whether or not the sign says spa.

A professional limited liability company works the same way. Under Title 14, Chapter 11, the members and managers of a medical PLLC must all be Georgia-licensed physicians.

Owning a med spa in Georgia therefore means owning one of two things. You hold the clinical entity, or you hold the med spa business around it. Plenty of first-time owners assume owning a medspa means holding both, and in Georgia it rarely does.

The short version of who can own a med spa in Georgia sits in the second column. One row is a clean yes, three rows are open questions, and two rows are settled noes. The third and fourth columns then decide how much structure you have to build around your license.

Those columns work as three sequential tests, and the field narrows at each one.

Can a non-physician own a medical practice in Georgia? Yes, through an MSO

Yes, through a management services organization that owns the business while a physician-led professional corporation delivers the care. The non-physician holds no equity in that clinical PC.

Georgia used to say this plainly. Former O.C.G.A. §43-34-37 banned the corporate practice of medicine outright, and the legislature repealed it in 1982.

No single successor statute replaced it. The restriction now comes from three licensure sections, §§43-34-21(3), 43-34-22 and 43-34-26, which reserve the practice of medicine to individually licensed people. The Professional Corporations Act supplies the rest.

Two versions of this circulate, and neither survives the code. Georgia does not enforce a codified corporate practice ban, and the state has not thrown ownership open either. A non-physician can own a medical practice in Georgia, but not the entity that holds the license.

The workaround is a management services organization, or MSO. A non-physician owns the MSO. That company holds the lease, the devices, the brand, and the staff contracts, then charges the physician-led PC a management fee.

The PC keeps the medical license, the clinical judgment, and the patient relationship. An MSO that starts setting treatment protocols or overruling a physician has stopped being a management company.

The fee is where these structures fail. O.C.G.A. §43-34-9 bars dividing a professional fee with an unlicensed person, and that ban runs separately from the ownership rules.

Price the management fee at fair market value and set it in advance. A percentage of revenue, a per-patient rate, or a per-procedure rate all read like a split professional fee.

So you can own a med spa without being a nurse, a physician, or any kind of clinician. What you cannot do is hold shares in the company that bills for the medicine.

The Georgia Health Spa Act is a different law entirely

O.C.G.A. §10-1-393.2 sits inside the Fair Business Practices Act and regulates prepaid membership contracts. The Georgia Attorney General’s office runs the filing regime, which is why that page keeps surfacing in searches about spa rules.

The Health Spa Act does not decide who may own a med spa. The law covers cancellation rights and contract terms for businesses selling weight, fitness, or appearance memberships.

A facility wholly owned and operated by licensed physicians who practice medicine there is exempt outright. A pay-per-visit med spa never triggers the Act either, because there is no membership contract to file.

Can a nurse practitioner or physician assistant own a med spa in Georgia?

Neither answer is settled. Georgia has no statute granting or denying NP and PA practice ownership, and the medical board has left the majority-ownership question open.

Two Georgia health-law firms read the statutes the same way. An APRN or PA can own a medical practice, and no code section says otherwise. The limits show up one layer down, in who supervises whom and who may pay whom.

One scope note first. What states can a NP own a med spa, and what states can a PA own a med spa, are fifty-answer questions. Georgia is the whole scope of this page. Our guides to Texas med spa ownership and Florida med spa ownership cover the two states closest in structure.

Can an NP own a med spa in Georgia? The board has not answered yet

An NP can own a Georgia med spa in practice. The Georgia Composite Medical Board has never decided whether an NP may hold majority ownership while employing a delegating physician.

An APRN cannot employ their own delegating physician. That rule is what makes NP ownership awkward, because the owner has to buy supervision from someone the owner does not control.

Delegation itself runs on a nurse protocol agreement under O.C.G.A. §43-34-25. A physician delegates named medical acts to the APRN in writing. One physician at an accredited site may hold protocol or supervisory relationships with up to eight APRNs and PAs combined.

Three dates in 2026 changed the picture, and the order they came in matters.

On May 7, 2026, the GCMB issued a position statement on the delegating physician and APRN relationship. Delegating physicians would need annual on-site observation and quarterly chart review.

A delegating physician also could not take compensation from the APRN-owned entity for supervision, and generally could not be employed by the APRN being supervised. For an NP-owned med spa, that combination is the whole business model.

APRN and PA groups objected. On May 26, 2026, the board published a public notice acknowledging significant questions and concerns, and reframed the statement as preliminary guidance pending review.

The board returned to it on June 4, 2026, and said the statement was meant to clarify a longstanding interpretation rather than create new policy. As of August 2026, the majority-ownership question is still open.

The honest answer to whether an NP can own a med spa in Georgia is that Georgia has not decided. Treat it as a live regulatory question, not a yes and not a no. A structure built on the May 7 wording may not match whatever the board eventually settles on.

Can a PA own a med spa in Georgia? No statute answers it either

No Georgia statute grants or denies a PA the right to own a medical practice. Whether a PA can own a med spa therefore sits in the same unresolved space as NP ownership.

What the code does cover is supervision. O.C.G.A. §43-34-103 requires a board-approved job description and periodic chart review by a supervising physician, sampled rather than complete.

A supervising physician generally cannot supervise more than four PAs. The eight-person cap in §43-34-25 counts APRNs and PAs together, so the two limits interact in any practice running both.

Anyone asking whether a physician assistant can open a med spa should plan around the same MSO structure an NP uses. The PA owns the management company, and a physician-led PC holds the clinical side and the supervising relationship.

Can a CRNA own a med spa in Georgia? Same question, narrower scope

A CRNA faces the same unresolved ownership question as any other APRN. CRNA scope centers on anesthesia and rarely extends to aesthetic injectables.

A CRNA licensed in Georgia is an advanced practice registered nurse, so the nurse protocol agreement in §43-34-25 applies the same way. The narrower question is what that protocol can cover.

A delegating physician cannot delegate outside the APRN’s own training and competence. So whether a CRNA can own a med spa in Georgia is the same open question, on a narrower scope of practice.

Can an RN own a med spa in Georgia? Equity yes, authority no

An RN can hold equity in a med spa’s MSO, but Georgia law does not let an RN authorize treatment. Every procedure needs an individualized order from a physician, NP, or PA, never a standing protocol.

Whether an RN can own a med spa in Georgia splits into two questions. Holding shares is a corporate question. Ordering a treatment is a licensure question, and Georgia answers the two separately.

The Georgia Board of Nursing’s position statement on cosmetic and aesthetic procedures is where practitioners get sent. An RN may perform Botox, dermal fillers, or laser treatment only after a prescriber has examined that patient and written an order.

A standing order does not cover the initial examination. Licensed practical nurses may not perform these procedures at all.

So a nurse working out how to open a med spa as a nurse is asking two questions. One is whether you can own the business, and the answer is yes through an MSO. The other is whether you can treat without a prescriber on the file, and the answer is no.

Whether an RN can open a med spa, and whether a nurse can open a med spa, get the same answer in Georgia. You can open it and own it, and you still need a physician, NP, or PA to authorize each treatment.

The wider question of what states can a RN own a med spa splits sharply by state. California treats nurse ownership differently from Georgia, and our guide to opening a med spa in California covers that route.

Does owning a med spa let you perform the treatments yourself?

No. Ownership and treatment authority are separate questions in Georgia. Holding equity does not decide who is licensed to inject or run a laser.

Anyone can open a med spa in the sense of forming a company and signing a lease. Owning a med spa does not widen anyone’s scope of practice.

Lasers have their own statute in Georgia. The Georgia Cosmetic Laser Services Act, O.C.G.A. §§43-34-240 to 43-34-248, regulates cosmetic laser services as a licensed activity. Claims that Georgia has no laser-specific law are out of date.

Section 43-34-244 creates two license levels. An assistant laser practitioner works under direct supervision. That level needs three board-approved laser or IPL course certificates, plus an existing license such as PA, LPN, RN, esthetician, or master cosmetologist.

A senior laser practitioner may supervise others, and §43-34-244 sets three requirements for that level:

• Three or more years of current or previous licensure, or national board certification, as a medical practitioner
• Three or more years of clinical or technological experience
• Two certificates from board-approved laser or IPL courses

Searches for laser license Georgia land on this two-level scheme. Applications now run through the GCMB Licensure Gateway, which the board made mandatory in July 2025.

Neither level is a medical license. An assistant or senior laser practitioner still works inside the Act’s supervision structure rather than outside it.

Injectables run on a different track from lasers. Who may inject in Georgia breaks down like this:

• A physician may inject within their own training
• An NP may inject under a nurse protocol agreement
• A PA may inject under a board-approved delegation agreement
• An RN may inject only on an individualized order for that patient
• An esthetician may not inject at all

What you need to set up med spa ownership correctly in Georgia

Correct med spa ownership in Georgia needs four things. You need a Georgia-licensed medical director, a properly formed PC or PLLC, filed delegation paperwork, and a fair-market-value management agreement.

• A Georgia-licensed MD or DO named as medical director, holding an active and unrestricted license
• A PC or PLLC formed under Title 14, with articles filed at the Georgia Secretary of State
• A nurse protocol agreement under §43-34-25 for every APRN, filed before that APRN treats anyone
• A board-approved delegation agreement under §43-34-103 for every PA
• A management services agreement priced at fair market value and set in advance, to stay clear of §43-34-9
• HIPAA safeguards for patient records, and OSHA controls for staff safety

The medical director must oversee all medical services, not just appear on a contract. A paper medical director who never sets foot in the building is the arrangement that fails a board review.

Two items on that list are where practices we onboard usually come up short. The delegation paperwork is normally complete and filed. The record proving the delegating physician reviewed charts each quarter is often missing.

What license do you need to open a medical spa in Georgia is the wrong first question. No license attaches to the business itself. Licenses attach to people, and the entity gets built around them.

What do you need to open a med spa, in budget terms, includes the legal build. Reported spend on attorneys and consultants to reach compliance runs $12,000 to $20,000 or more. That range comes from practitioner reporting rather than a published study, so treat it as a planning figure.

Pabau turns your delegation chain into a record you can produce

Every structure above produces paperwork somebody has to find again later. The protocol agreement, the delegating physician’s name, the prescriber’s order, the treatment note, and the quarterly chart review are five records about one appointment.

Practice management software like Pabau keeps them on one client record. Each treatment note carries the provider who performed the treatment and the prescriber who authorized it.

Your delegation chain becomes a field rather than a memory. Consent forms, before-and-after photos, and the order behind each injection attach to the same patient timeline.

A medical director can then review a day’s charts from one screen instead of walking between treatment rooms. When an MSO sits alongside a physician-led PC, records stay tied to the entity that delivered the service.

Pabau’s software for med spas brings the calendar, client records, consent, payments, and reporting into one system. The audit trail builds itself while your team works.

If you are still comparing platforms, our guide to medical spa EMR software lines up the options aesthetic practices run on.

Show the delegation chain behind every treatment

Pabau ties each treatment note to the provider who performed it and the prescriber who authorized it. Protocol agreements, chart reviews, consent forms, and photos sit on one client record.

Book a demo

Conclusion

Physician ownership is the clean answer in Georgia. A Georgia-licensed MD or DO can hold the clinical entity, the management company, or both, and no part of that structure has to be argued.

If you are not a physician, the MSO is the route, and the management fee is where it lives or dies. Price the fee at fair market value, set it in advance, and keep clinical decisions on the physician’s side of the wall.

If you are an NP or a PA, do not commit capital on the strength of a blog’s yes. Georgia’s board moved twice in 2026 and still has not answered the majority-ownership question. Have a Georgia healthcare attorney read your structure before money moves.

A structure only holds if the records behind it do. Book a demo to see how Pabau keeps the protocol, the order, and the treatment note on one client record.

Continue your research

Structuring in Texas instead? Who can legally own a med spa in Texas? explains the majority-ownership rule Georgia has never written down.

Comparing Georgia with Florida? Who can own a med spa in Florida? Rules by license type covers a state with no corporate practice statute at all.

Looking at Arizona too? How to open a med spa in Arizona: Who can legally own one walks through ownership and setup in a third state.

Need the physician on your paperwork? How to hire a medical director for your med spa covers what to agree on before the contract is signed.

Building the compliance side? The ultimate medical spa requirements checklist lists the licenses, records, and policies an owner is responsible for.

Frequently asked questions