How to Open a Nurse-Owned Practice in Oregon

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. Oregon is one of the two densest states in the Five Square network, and a lot of the nurses you'd meet at a community call practice somewhere between Portland and Medford. You won't be the first here, which helps. (Already run your own practice? Skip ahead, there's a section below built specifically for you.)

The thing that stops most nurses in Oregon 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 Oregon nurse asks first.

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

Yes, with the right setup. Oregon's professional corporation statutes decide who can own the clinical side. ORS 58.375 requires physicians to hold a majority of a medical PC. ORS 58.376, the joint statute, defines "licensee" as a physician, physician associate, or nurse practitioner, with the same majority rule. So a nurse practitioner can be a qualifying owner outright. An RN owns the practice through a standard Oregon LLC, with the clinical oversight coming from a medical director who holds the license Oregon wants on the clinical entity. Five Square sets that structure up with you; it's the part nobody should freelance.

The Oregon rule that catches almost everybody: a questionnaire is not an exam

Oregon doesn't use the term good faith exam. What it does say is blunt. The Oregon Medical Board's telemedicine statement requires the same standard of care as an in-person visit, verification of the patient's identity and location, and informed consent about the limits of telehealth, and then adds: "Treatment based solely on an online questionnaire without individualized review and assessment does not constitute an acceptable standard of care" (OMB Telemedicine Statement of Philosophy, amended April 4, 2024). A form that auto-clears a patient for tox doesn't count in Oregon. A live video or phone assessment by the prescriber does, which is exactly how the on-demand exams Five Square members use are built.

Oregon NPs have full practice authority: OAR 851-050-0005(5) makes the NP "independently responsible and accountable" for diagnosis and for prescribing legend drugs and controlled substances, with no collaborative agreement anywhere in Division 50. If your medical director is a physician, the Oregon Medical Board's medical spa statement applies: spa patients are their patients, and they owe "effective supervision through oversight, direction, evaluation and guidance" (OMB, Responsibilities of Medical Directors of Medical Spas, adopted October 9, 2015). No on-site rule and no numeric response-time rule appears in any Oregon primary source, so a remote director works here.

One surprise in that same OMB statement: if your director prescribes scheduled medications, only they can order, own, possess, or access them inside the spa. That lockbox key isn't yours, even as the owner. Tox and filler aren't scheduled, so most aesthetics practices never hit this. It matters the moment anyone wants a scheduled medication on site.

The initial patient evaluation itself follows the same OMB statement: an evaluation, informed consent, and documentation, with the diagnosis and treatment plan never delegated to anyone who isn't licensed for independent medical judgment. The Board of Nursing says the same thing in its RN FAQ: an RN implements the provider's treatment plan and doesn't diagnose or prescribe.

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 Oregon 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:

"As a single mom, the thought of risking my stable nursing income terrified me. Starting my aesthetics business part-time gave me confidence and security."
- Kiley D., BSN, RN-C

"I'm never going back to floor nursing. I didn't think making this income while still making it to all my kids' activities was even possible. Five Square made it easy."
- Lindsey K., RN

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 Oregon? 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. In Oregon, you can join whether you're just starting out or already running a practice.

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 Oregon, 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.

Oregon-specific costs to budget for

Filing Articles of Organization for a domestic LLC with the Secretary of State is $100, and the annual renewal is another $100 each year on your anniversary. Oregon has no general sales tax, so product you sell to patients goes out the door with nothing added at the register, which is a small but real edge over Washington practices across the river.

So, where do you actually start in Oregon?

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 Oregon 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 Oregon

Do I need a PC or a PLLC to own a practice in Oregon?

Not as an RN. Only physicians, physician associates, and nurse practitioners can be qualifying owners of an Oregon professional corporation (ORS 58.375 and 58.376), so an RN's practice runs through a standard Oregon LLC, with the clinical oversight coming from a medical director. Nurse practitioners can own the clinical entity directly. Either way the LLC is $100 to file and $100 a year to renew.

Can the initial evaluation be done by telehealth in Oregon?

Yes, with a real provider on the other end. The Oregon Medical Board's telemedicine statement requires the same standard of care as in person, verification of the patient's identity and location, disclosure of the provider's credentials, and informed consent about telemedicine's limits. It also says treatment based solely on an online questionnaire without individualized review isn't acceptable care. So a questionnaire that auto-clears a patient for tox doesn't count; a video or phone assessment by the prescriber does.

Who can handle controlled substances in an Oregon med spa?

Only the prescriber. The OMB's medical spa statement says medical directors authorized to prescribe scheduled medications "must be aware that only they can order, own, possess or have access to those medications within their medical spa." For most aesthetics practices this rarely comes up, since tox and filler aren't scheduled. It matters the moment anyone wants a scheduled medication on site, because at that point the owner, the front desk, and the RN can't be the ones holding it.

Can a registered nurse own a med spa in Oregon? Yes, with the right setup. Oregon's professional corporation statutes decide who can own the clinical side.

Do I need a medical director for aesthetics in Oregon? Yes. Oregon 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 Oregon? Yes, within a compliant setup and with the oversight Oregon requires. The clinical work is rarely the question; it's whether the practice around it is built legally.

I already run a practice in Oregon. 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 Oregon? Yes. Five Square already supports nurses in Oregon, so a discovery call is about your timeline and your goals, not whether we're there yet.

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.