How to Open a Nurse-Owned Practice in Arkansas

You've done the math in your head more than once. A few injectable appointments on your day off, on your own schedule, in your own space, and suddenly the shifts you pick up out of obligation start to look optional. Northwest Arkansas is one of the fastest-growing metros in the country, with the Walmart and Tyson corporate crowd in Bentonville and Rogers, and Little Rock and Conway have plenty of patients who'd rather see a nurse they know than drive to a chain. (Already run your own practice? Skip ahead, there's a section below built specifically for you.)

The thing that stops most nurses in Arkansas was never the clinical work. You already do harder things on a Tuesday than a first tox or IV appointment will ever ask of you. What stops people is everything around it, the ownership rules, the medical director, the setup, all sitting there as one giant undefined to-do. So let's take it in order, starting with the question every Arkansas nurse asks first.

Can a nurse own an aesthetics, wellness, or functional health practice in Arkansas?

Yes, with the right setup. Arkansas has a corporate practice of medicine rule that lives in an Attorney General opinion and the Medical Corporation Act: a non-physician-owned corporation "is not currently authorized to employ physicians for profit," and only licensed physicians may own a medical corporation (A.C.A. 4-29-301 et seq.). A nurse-owned LLC that renders nursing and contracts with, rather than employs, its medical director sits outside that, and the Board of Nursing's aesthetics position statement is written for exactly that arrangement.

The Arkansas rule that catches almost everybody: every procedure needs a patient-specific order, and LPNs are out

The Arkansas State Board of Nursing wrote this one down. Position Statement 21-1, adopted January 7, 2021 and revised September 8, 2022, says "aesthetic procedures shall be prescribed by a qualified physician or an APRN with prescriptive authority," and an RN "shall practice under a patient specific order written by the delegating physician or supervising APRN." Standing orders are allowed, with a catch: they live in the patient's chart, list name, diagnosis, procedure, site, drug, dose, frequency, emergency instructions, and the prescriber's signature, and get reviewed every year. During a procedure the physician or APRN has to be available in person or electronically.

Then the line that ends a lot of hiring plans: "The performance of aesthetic procedures is not within the scope of practice of a licensed practical nurse."

Can an APRN be your medical director in Arkansas?

Yes, and the credential has two flavors. Most Arkansas APRNs prescribe under a collaborative practice agreement with a physician, with a quality assurance plan reviewed annually (A.C.A. 17-87-310). Act 412 of 2021 opened a second path: a certified nurse practitioner with 6,240 hours under a collaborative agreement can get a certificate of full independent practice authority, renewable every three years, and then prescribe with no physician involved (A.C.A. 17-87-314). A physician director skips all of it, and Arkansas has no on-site rule for physician oversight of an RN.

The initial patient evaluation in Arkansas

Arkansas doesn't use the phrase good faith exam in the nursing rules. The order comes from the prescriber, and the Board expects you to show competency in "proper client selection, history taking, physical assessment parameters, indications and contraindications for treatment" (Position Statement 21-1). Telehealth for the prescriber's evaluation isn't spelled out for aesthetics.

One that surprises people: on February 4, 2026 the Board of Nursing said IV hydration spas need a valid provider order, only licensed nurses insert IVs, and mixing multiple drugs into a saline bag is compounding, outside nursing scope. If your menu has a "cocktail," read that one twice.

How Five Square actually gets you started

The whole thing lives in one place: the free Five Square Nurses app. Your medical oversight, the step-by-step training, your pharmacy and vendor accounts, and the entire community of nurse business owners are all in there. You can open it between patients, on a lunch break, or on the couch at 9pm, and pick up right where you left off.

When you join, you're not handed a login and wished good luck. There's a Getting Started path that puts the order of operations right in front of you, so the mountain becomes a checklist.

You pick your lane, or combine them. Five Square supports three:

• Aesthetics. Tox and dermal filler, the core of a nurse-injector practice, with room to add more as you train.
• Wellness. IV therapy and vitamin injections. Low startup, very mobile-friendly, and a natural add-on to aesthetics.
• Functional Health. Peptides, lab work, and whole-person care for nurses who want longer-term, relationship-based patients.

You bring the nursing license and the nerve. We bring the medical director, the compliant Arkansas setup, the training, member pricing on products, marketing help, and weekly live calls with experts and other nurse owners, so you're never stuck guessing alone.

And every Five Square member, brand new or already established, gets instant on-demand Good Faith Exams for $19.99 each, a price we subsidize because we believe in nurse success. A walk-in can be cleared in about a minute, seven days a week, and the exam paperwork lands right in the patient's chart, which is exactly what a state board wants to see.

You start before you feel ready, and that's the point

Most programs make you wait. Watch every module, sit through every call, and someday you finally see a patient. By then half the people who started have lost momentum. Five Square runs the other way: you start your practice while you're still finishing the training, because the training sticks when there's a real patient on next week's calendar.

Kayla, an ER nurse in North Carolina, had never injected anyone when she joined. She watched the videos, took notes, and set a goal of 30 people in 30 days. Here's the advice she'd give a nurse who's scared to start:

"Believe in yourself, even when you don't know how to do something. Figure it out. The clinical knowledge from your nursing career is more than enough to get started, and there's a community of people around you who want to help. Do it scared."
- Kayla, ER nurse

She launched April 4. Her first month: 46 appointments, 28 good-faith exams, and $10,320 in revenue, run out of a single room inside a salon she'd been a client at for years. That's one real month from one real nurse, not a typical result and not a promise, and your market and hours are your own. The point is she was exactly where you are, never-done-this-before, and she started anyway.

Does it actually work once you launch?

Getting launched is step one. What you really want to know is whether it works after that. Here's the honest picture, numbers included, because income claims in this industry deserve a skeptical read.

Results vary, and they depend on things no membership controls: your market, your hours, how long you've been at it, how consistently you market. As practices mature, some established members report months in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. Individual results vary widely. Some land higher, some lower, and nobody here will promise you a number.

What's more useful is the math underneath, which is public. Neurotoxin appointments bring in $200 to $600. A syringe of filler runs $500 to $800. IV sessions run $150 to $350. Functional health consults run $150 to $300, often with patients coming back monthly. At those prices, two to four appointments a month would cover the $899 membership before product costs, and everything past that is the business growing. Want to see it with your own pricing? Run your numbers in the Five Square membership earnings calculator.

The nurses say it better than a revenue range does:

"Five Square is the reason I was able to launch my career as an aesthetic nurse injector. From setting up my LLC and making sure I'm compliant in my state, to a dedicated medical director, weekly live calls with experts, and a huge network of nurse entrepreneurs, it was the best decision I made."
- Krystle N., 5-star Google review

"As a nurse, taking risks is not in our vocabulary. Five Square made me excited about starting my own business. Timely responses, professional, highly knowledgeable, and a team that wants to see me succeed. I say my risk was absolutely worth it."
- Patricia G., 5-star Google review

Inside the community, the wins show up in real time. A nurse a few weeks into her launch posted she was already up to eight bookings, nearly all of it from one post in a local mom's Facebook group. Another saw a husband and wife for their good-faith exams in under ten minutes using the same-day exam tool when her director wasn't free. Scroll the forum any week and it's full of small wins like these.

The Google rating sits at 4.8 stars, and the reviews keep naming the same things: the setup help, the medical director, the training, and a team that answers when you're stuck.

Already run a practice in Arkansas? There's a membership for that too

Not every nurse reading this is starting from scratch. Plenty of you already run your own practice and already pay for a medical director somewhere. If that's you, a lot of what's above is stuff you sorted out a while ago, and Five Square has a leaner membership built for exactly your spot. Arkansas is on the Five Square expansion roadmap, and in most new states the Established Nurse Membership opens first, so if you already run a practice, you're likely first in line.

It's called the Established Nurse Membership. It's $799 a month, month to month, no annual lock. You get a medical director who's actually engaged, a compliant structure in Arkansas, vendor and product pricing, the Five Square Nurse Community, and those instant on-demand Good Faith Exams at $19.99 each, a price we subsidize for our members because we believe in nurse success. There's no new-injector training folded in, because you don't need it and shouldn't pay for it. If you ever want the full education stack later, you can add it.

Here's the honest pitch. Most established practices are either paying $1,500 to $5,000 a month for a director who's genuinely involved, or a few hundred for one who signs protocols and disappears, which is its own risk when a board comes asking. For most nurses, $799 all in beats both, on price and on what you actually get. Tell us what you're paying now and we'll show you the side by side. No pitch, just the math.

What it costs, and the catch nurses look for

For a nurse starting out, membership is a flat $899 a month for one tier, $1,199 for two, $1,499 for all three, on a 12-month term. Startup beyond that is lighter than people expect: a starter tox order, insurance that runs well under most nurses' guesses, and the products you actually use. No revenue share, ever. (Already have a practice? The Established Nurse Membership above is $799 a month, month to month.)

That's usually the moment the skeptical part of your brain asks where the catch is. Fair. So, plainly: you own your practice and your patients through your own LLC. Five Square does not take a cut of what you make, and if a discovery call turns up that the honest answer for you is 'not yet' or 'start smaller,' the team will tell you that too.

Arkansas-specific costs to budget for

The Certificate of Organization for an Arkansas LLC is $45 online or $50 on paper with the Secretary of State. The recurring cost is the annual franchise tax: every LLC pays a flat $150 a year, due May 1, and a 2025 bill to repeal it died in committee, so plan on it. If you sell retail product to patients, Arkansas charges 6.5 percent state sales tax plus city and county rates that push Little Rock and Fayetteville addresses past 9 percent, and you'll register for a sales tax permit with the Department of Finance and Administration before your first sale.

So, where do you actually start in Arkansas?

You book the call. That's genuinely it. Not a six-month research project, a 15-minute conversation about your license, your goals, and what launching (or leveling up) in Arkansas would look like for you. Whether you're brand new or already running a practice, the whole reason Five Square exists is so you're not doing the hard parts alone.

Schedule a discovery call

Common questions about starting a practice in Arkansas

Can an LPN inject Botox or fillers in Arkansas?

No. The Arkansas State Board of Nursing's Position Statement 21-1 states that "the performance of aesthetic procedures is not within the scope of practice of a licensed practical nurse." That's the clearest LPN answer of any state on this list. If you're an LPN who wants to inject, the path in Arkansas runs through an RN license first.

Do I need a written order for every Botox patient in Arkansas?

Yes, patient-specific. An RN performs aesthetic procedures "under a patient specific order written by the delegating physician or supervising APRN," and standing orders only count when they're documented in that patient's record with name, diagnosis, procedure, site, drug, dose, frequency, emergency instructions, and the prescriber's dated signature (Position Statement 21-1). The prescriber also has to be reachable in person or electronically while you're treating. Five Square's charting and on-demand evaluation setup is built to produce that record every time.

Can I mix vitamins into an IV bag in an Arkansas wellness practice?

Not the way most IV menus describe it. The Board of Nursing's February 4, 2026 statement on IV hydration spas says mixing multiple drugs into a saline bag is compounding, which sits outside nursing scope, and that a prescriber with prescriptive authority has to order the fluid and each additive for the individual patient. Only licensed nurses insert the IV. Build the menu with your medical director and your pharmacy so every bag is either ordered as-is or prepared under the right license.

Can a registered nurse own a med spa in Arkansas? Yes, with the right setup. Arkansas has a corporate practice of medicine rule that lives in an Attorney General opinion and the Medical Corporation Act: a non-physician-owned corporation "is not currently authorized to employ physicians for profit," and only licensed physicians may own a medical corporation (A.C.A. 4-29-301 et seq.).

Do I need a medical director for aesthetics in Arkansas? Yes. Arkansas requires oversight for medical aesthetic services, and every Five Square practice includes a medical director as part of the membership.

Can a nurse do Botox in Arkansas? Yes, within a compliant structure and with the physician oversight Arkansas requires. The clinical work is rarely the barrier; the structure around it is.

I already run a practice in Arkansas. Can Five Square still help? Yes. The Established Nurse Membership is built for nurses who already have a practice: $799 a month, month to month, with a medical director, a compliant structure, vendor pricing, and $19.99 on-demand Good Faith Exams. No new-injector training you don't need, and no annual lock.

How much are Good Faith Exams? For Five Square members, simple Good Faith Exams are $19.99 each, on demand, seven days a week, a price we subsidize because we believe in nurse success. One exam can clear a patient for several treatments at once, and the documentation attaches right to the patient's chart.

Is Five Square available in Arkansas yet? Arkansas is on the Five Square expansion roadmap, and in most new states the Established Nurse Membership opens first. The fastest way to get the timeline and hold your spot is a discovery call.

How much does it cost to start? For a new nurse, membership is $899 a month for one tier, and startup beyond that (a tox order, insurance, products) is lighter than most nurses expect. If you already run a practice, the Established Nurse Membership is $799 a month, month to month. No revenue share either way.