Tessic Health

KS · STATE RULES

Telehealth rules in Kansas

Kansas is the rare state that put a clock on its own regulator. An out-of-state physician who wants to practice telemedicine here applies to the Board of Healing Arts for a waiver, and the board has fifteen days from a complete application to issue it, with the fee capped at one hundred dollars. What the waiver buys is narrower than it looks, because the Kansas Telemedicine Act excludes voice-only conversations and email-only exchanges from telemedicine altogether.

Book a DemoAll states
First visit
Async with conditions
Physician license
Waiver in 15 days, or IMLC
Controlled drugs
Same rules as an office visit
Nurse practitioners
Full practice

Rules checked September 2026 · 15 sources cited

ONLY IN KANSAS

What is different about Kansas

Each rule here is true of Kansas and of none of the states that border it. Beside each one: what the neighbours do instead.

  1. 01 · Licenses

    A waiver the board must answer in fifteen days

    An out-of-state physician may practice telemedicine here by obtaining a waiver from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which shall issue it within fifteen days of receiving a complete application from an applicant who holds an unrestricted license elsewhere and meets the qualifications. The application fee cannot exceed one hundred dollars.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

    Across the border

    • Nebraska

      Nebraska has no waiver and no deadline. Its opening for outside physicians is a consultation exemption, covering someone incidentally called into the state or contacted electronically for advice.

      Source: Nebraska Uniform Credentialing Act

    • Missouri

      Missouri's exceptions are informal consultation, emergency or disaster response, and episodic consultation, all framed around the absence of an expectation of compensation rather than an application anyone files.

      Source: Mo. Rev. Stat. 191.1145

    • Oklahoma

      Oklahoma offers nothing comparable: a valid relationship may be established through telemedicine only where the physician already holds a license issued by that state.

      Source: Oklahoma Statutes title 59

    • Colorado

      Colorado routes everyone through the compact to an ordinary state license, with the published provider profile duty attached, and sets no service-level promise on how quickly that arrives.

      Source: C.R.S. 12-30-102

  2. 02 · Practice

    A phone call is not telemedicine here

    The Kansas Telemedicine Act defines telemedicine as the delivery of health care services using real-time two-way interactive audio, visual or audio-visual communications, and expressly excludes a voice-only conversation and an email-only exchange between a physician and a patient from that definition.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 40

    Across the border

    • Nebraska

      Nebraska takes the opposite approach, letting any credential holder establish a relationship through telehealth and recognizing asynchronous contact rather than carving modalities out of the definition.

      Source: Neb. Rev. Stat. 38-1,143

    • Missouri

      Missouri excludes no modality by definition and conditions the paperwork instead, accepting a patient questionnaire only where the treating professional reviews it and it carries what an in-person evaluation would have produced.

      Source: Mo. Rev. Stat. 191.1146

    • Oklahoma

      Oklahoma sets a comparative test rather than a technical one, asking that the information available to the distant site physician be equivalent to what a face-to-face encounter would have given them.

      Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Oklahoma

    • Colorado

      Colorado names no required technology at all, putting its front-end duty into a written statement given before the first telemedicine treatment about the patient's right to refuse it.

      Source: C.R.S. 25.5-5-320

  3. 03 · Prescribing

    The waiver comes with a documentation duty

    A physician practicing here under the out-of-state waiver must conduct an appropriate assessment and evaluation of the patient's current condition and document the medical indication for any prescription issued. The duty attaches to the waiver itself, not only to the general standard of care.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

    Across the border

    • Nebraska

      Nebraska attaches no prescribing conditions to its consultation exemption and simply authorizes a credential holder delivering telehealth to prescribe where state and federal law already permit it.

      Source: Neb. Rev. Stat. 38-1,143

    • Missouri

      Missouri writes the duty into its general telemedicine rule instead of a credential, requiring the provider to interview the patient, review relevant history, and examine sufficiently for diagnosis before prescribing.

      Source: Mo. Rev. Stat. 191.1146

    • Oklahoma

      Oklahoma has no out-of-state credential to hang a documentation duty on, since a physician must hold its own license before treating anyone in the state remotely.

      Source: Oklahoma Statutes title 59

    • Colorado

      Colorado's prescribing conditions are a monitoring-program query before an opioid or a benzodiazepine and electronic transmission of controlled substances, neither tied to how the physician was licensed.

      Source: C.R.S. 12-280-404

PRACTICE RULES

How telehealth works in Kansas

The Kansas Telemedicine Act sets the frame and the Board of Healing Arts supplies the practice standards. Between them the important question is which contacts count as telemedicine at all.

  1. 01

    Real-time, two-way, interactive

    Telemedicine means delivery using real-time two-way interactive audio, visual or audio-visual communications. Everything a brand wants to bill or defend as telemedicine has to fit that shape, and asynchronous contact sits outside it.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 40

  2. 02

    Telemedicine can start the relationship

    A valid provider and patient relationship may be established through telemedicine, so no prior in-person visit is required. What is required is that the encounter meet the act's definition rather than being a call or an exchange of messages.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  3. 03

    Same standards as in person

    The same laws and regulations that apply to a provider prescribing by in-person contact apply to prescribing by telemedicine, which leaves no separate, lighter telemedicine standard for a brand to rely on.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  4. 04

    Public health law sits alongside

    Kansas keeps its health and public health provisions in chapter 65 of the statutes, including the controlled substances and prescription monitoring provisions a remote prescriber has to work within.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 65

FIRST VISIT

Can a first visit happen without a live call in Kansas?

Yes, with conditions

Yes, if the encounter is real-time and interactive. Telemedicine may establish a valid relationship here, but a voice-only call and an email-only exchange are excluded from the definition, and a relationship built on an internet questionnaire is not treated as a valid prescriber relationship.

That combination rules out the two cheapest intake designs. What is left is a live audio-visual encounter, or an audio-visual encounter supported by information gathered beforehand.

  1. 01

    The questionnaire problem

    For prescribing, a legitimate medical purpose requires a valid preexisting relationship rather than one established through an internet-based questionnaire, so the form can inform the visit but cannot be the visit.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  2. 02

    Voice-only is outside the act

    Because a voice-only conversation between a physician and a patient is excluded from the definition, a telephone follow-up is not a telemedicine service here even where it would be clinically sufficient.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 40

  3. 03

    Assessment before a prescription

    An appropriate assessment and evaluation of the patient's current condition comes before any prescription, and the medical indication for that prescription is documented. Under the out-of-state waiver this is spelled out expressly.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

PRESCRIBING

Prescriptions and controlled drugs in Kansas

There is no separate telemedicine prescribing chapter. The state's position is that remote prescribing is prescribing, so the controlled substance law and the monitoring program apply without adjustment.

  1. 01

    No telemedicine discount

    The same laws and regulations that apply to prescribing drugs, including controlled substances, by in-person contact apply to prescribing by telemedicine. A brand cannot point to a telehealth exception because the state did not write one.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  2. 02

    Document the indication

    The medical indication for any prescription issued is documented in the record. Where the prescriber holds the out-of-state waiver rather than a Kansas license, that documentation is part of what the waiver was granted on.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  3. 03

    Controlled substances in chapter 65

    The uniform controlled substances provisions and the prescription monitoring program sit in chapter 65 of the statutes, which is where a remote prescriber's reporting and query obligations are found.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 65

  4. 04

    Federal conditions apply on top

    For a controlled substance the federal telemedicine conditions bind as well, and the state offers no waiver of them, so a prescriber satisfies both the federal rules and the state's ordinary prescribing standards.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

Federal rules apply on top of every state's. Prescribing controlled substances by telehealth without an in-person visit runs on DEA flexibilities currently extended through December 31, 2026, with a permanent rule still pending.

LICENSES

Who can treat patients in Kansas

Two routes reach a patient here: the Board of Healing Arts waiver for an out-of-state physician, and a full license, which the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact can expedite. The state participates in an unusually long list of compacts.

  1. 01

    What the waiver requires

    The applicant holds an unrestricted license in another state and meets the board's qualifications. The board shall issue the waiver within fifteen days of a complete application, and the fee is capped at one hundred dollars.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  2. 02

    Compacts across many professions

    The state belongs to around fifteen licensure compacts, including the medical, nursing, psychology, physical therapy and physician assistant compacts, which matters for a brand staffing more than one discipline at once.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  3. 03

    Nurse practitioners practice independently

    On the American Association of Nurse Practitioners map this is a full practice state, which means the board of nursing alone authorizes a nurse practitioner to diagnose, prescribe and manage a course of treatment.

    Source: AANP: full practice authority brief

  4. 04

    The compact still ends in a license

    A letter of qualification from a physician's state of principal licensure shortens the application but produces a license issued here, which is the alternative to the waiver for anyone building a continuing practice.

    Source: Interstate Medical Licensure Compact

How Tessic Health's providers are licensed in Kansas

ADVERTISING

Marketing to patients in Kansas

There is no state privacy act and no telehealth advertising rule, so marketing answers to the Kansas Consumer Protection Act, which is unusually favorable to consumers, and to the board's misconduct provisions.

  1. 01

    Deceptive and unconscionable acts

    The Kansas Consumer Protection Act reaches both deceptive acts and unconscionable ones, allows a private action, and provides civil penalties per violation, which makes an overstated outcome claim expensive rather than merely correctable.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 50

  2. 02

    Claims reach the license

    False or misleading advertising by a licensee is a discipline ground before the Board of Healing Arts, so a brand's promotional language exposes the treating clinician's credential alongside the company itself.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

  3. 03

    Do not oversell the modality

    Because a phone call and an email exchange fall outside the definition, marketing that offers telemedicine by phone here describes something the act does not recognize, whatever a clinician might be willing to do.

    Source: Kansas Statutes chapter 40

  4. 04

    No statutory opt-out rights

    Without an omnibus privacy statute, residents have no state right to opt out of targeted advertising or data sale, so a brand's trackers are constrained by federal health privacy law and by its own notice.

    Source: Center for Connected Health Policy: Kansas

TESSIC HEALTH IN KANSAS

How Tessic Health's providers cover Kansas

Kansas visits are built to fit the act's definition first, because a contact that falls outside it is not a telemedicine service here however good the clinical work behind it was.

  1. 01

    Audio-visual by default

    Encounters with patients in this state run on real-time two-way audio and video, and telephone-only contact is treated as an administrative call rather than as a billable or defensible telemedicine visit.

  2. 02

    Licensed or waived, never neither

    Clinicians reaching patients here hold a state license, obtained directly or through the compact, or the Board of Healing Arts waiver, and the credential is recorded against every encounter.

  3. 03

    Indication documented every time

    The assessment of the patient's current condition and the medical indication for each prescription are written into the record at the visit, which is what the waiver conditions ask for explicitly.

  4. 04

    Forms feed the visit, never replace it

    Intake questionnaires are used to prepare the encounter, and no prescription is issued on a questionnaire alone, because a relationship built that way is not a valid prescriber relationship here.

  5. 05

    Pharmacy and markup

    Fulfillment runs through pharmacies registered to ship into this state, priced at 0% markup, with cold-chain packing for anything that needs it.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Questions about telehealth in Kansas

  • Fifteen days. The Board of Healing Arts shall issue the waiver within fifteen days of receiving a complete application from a physician holding an unrestricted license elsewhere, and the application fee cannot exceed one hundred dollars.

  • No. The Kansas Telemedicine Act defines telemedicine as real-time two-way interactive audio, visual or audio-visual communication, and expressly excludes a voice-only conversation and an email-only exchange between physician and patient.

  • Yes, where the encounter meets the definition. For prescribing, though, a legitimate medical purpose requires a valid relationship rather than one established through an internet-based questionnaire.

  • Not by state law. The same laws and regulations that apply to prescribing by in-person contact apply to prescribing by telemedicine, so the federal telemedicine conditions and the ordinary state rules both apply without adjustment.

  • No. This is a full practice state, so the board of nursing alone authorizes a nurse practitioner to diagnose, order and interpret tests, prescribe and manage a course of treatment.

  • No omnibus statute. Marketing data is constrained by federal health privacy law and by the brand's own notice, while the Kansas Consumer Protection Act reaches deceptive and unconscionable claims with a private right of action.

SOURCES

Rules checked September 2026 · 15 sources cited. A planning summary, not legal advice. Statutes, board rules and enforcement priorities change; a brand's own counsel should review its model and marketing before launch.

OTHER STATES

Rules in other states

Each state page is researched from that state's own statutes and board rules.

All state pages →