Written Protocol · RN
Illinois Standing Order for Registered Nurses
Recognized but not required in every case. The Standing Order is the written instrument Illinois law names for a Registered Nurse working with a physician. Below: the board that governs it, what it contains when one is used, and the supervision rules that apply either way.
RNs (general licensure, not an APRN) are not subject to physician-supervision or collaborative-agreement requirements in Illinois (225 ILCS 65).
What a voluntary Registered Nurse agreement covers in Illinois
Illinois requires no written agreement for registered nurses. These are the clauses a practice includes when it chooses to put one in writing. The Illinois Board of Nursing governs registered nurses here.
Physician may delegate patient care tasks to a Registered Nurse by written or electronic standing orders, protocols, guidelines, or verbal orders.
Source: 225 ILCS 60/54.2
A delegated task stays within the scope, education, training, or experience of Physician and within a physician-patient relationship, and excludes any task that law or rule reserves to a physician.
Source: 225 ILCS 60/54.2
- The Standing Order also carries 1 scope clauses, authored in the document itself.
Statutes and rules these clauses cite
- 225 ILCS 60/54.2statute
Physician delegation of patient care tasks to RNs and LPNs; delegation may be by any means, including written or electronic standing orders, protocols, guidelines, or verbal orders.
What Illinois does require
The supervision and prescribing rules that apply to registered nurses regardless of any agreement.
Proximity
Not codified
Supervision ratio
Not codified — no cap on file
Chart review
Not codified
Meeting cadence
Not codified
Prescriptive authority
No agreement needed to prescribe · no controlled-substance authority
RNs do not have independent prescriptive authority in Illinois.
Written agreement
Not required
Unconditional — general RN licensure is never subject to physician supervision or a collaborative agreement in Illinois.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Licensee-only ownership required — Professional service corporation (805 ILCS 10) or PLLC (805 ILCS 185) for nursing services; non-clinical businesses an RN might own fall outside that regime and carry no ownership restriction.
For medical-aesthetics (med-spa) businesses performing delegated medical procedures, Illinois delegation rules (Medical Practice Act, Ill. Admin. Code tit. 68, § 1285.336) allow delegation to LPNs/RNs/APRNs, but ownership of the clinical entity itself remains a Medical Corporation Act question, not this general nursing-corporation rule.
Sources for the supervision rules (2)
- 225 ILCS 65 — Nurse Practice Act
- 805 ILCS 15 — Medical Corporation Act
About Illinois's rules
The 2017 Nurse Practice Act reform (P.A. 100-0513) lets NP/CNM/CNS attest to full practice authority after 4,000 hours under a written collaborative agreement plus 250 hours of CE — CRNAs are not included in that attestation pathway. The Medical Corporation Act (805 ILCS 15) restricts clinical-entity ownership to physicians; APRNs/PAs may still use a professional service corporation or PLLC of their own licensees.
Other clinicians in Illinois: see the state overview.