Starting a solo therapy practice in Michigan: license, entity, and panels

Which board licenses your practice in Michigan?

Michigan runs counseling, marriage and family therapy, and social work licensure through separate boards that all sit under one umbrella agency — LARA's Bureau of Professional Licensing. The Bureau publishes application, fee, renewal, and supervision requirements for each licensed behavioral-health track, including the Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) credential that lets a counselor practice and bill independently 1Ref 1Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing (2026).Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing.Michigan licensure authority, that LARA's Bureau of Professional Licensing houses the counseling, MFT, and social work boards, and that it publishes application, fee, renewal, and supervision requirements.. A marriage and family therapist instead holds an LMFT issued through the Board of Marriage and Family Therapy, and a clinical social worker holds an LMSW — three different boards, one shared licensing bureau.

Michigan requires a period of supervised, limited-license practice before a counselor qualifies for the independent LPC credential, and that supervised period does not transfer to or from another state. North Carolina's board and Nebraska's licensing unit, for instance, each set their own separate supervised-practice and exam requirements that carry no standing in Michigan 2Ref 2North Carolina Board of Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselors (2026).North Carolina Board of Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselors.Illustrates that supervised-practice and licensure requirements are set independently by each state's own board, using North Carolina's board as an example of a separate, non-transferable set of rules.3Ref 3Nebraska DHHS Behavioral Health Licensing (2026).Nebraska DHHS Licensing.Illustrates that supervised-practice and licensure requirements are set independently by each state's own licensing authority, using Nebraska's DHHS licensing unit as an example of a separate, non-transferable set of rules.. Confirm your specific license track and supervision status against Michigan's current requirements before signing a lease or a payer contract.

PLLC, PC, or sole proprietorship for a Michigan practice

A Michigan clinician can start as a sole proprietor, but most solo practices instead organize as a PLLC — a limited liability company restricted to a single licensed profession — filed with Michigan's Corporations, Securities, and Commercial Licensing Bureau rather than with the counseling or social work board. A professional corporation is the alternative structure some solo clinicians choose instead.

Which structure fits, and how it's taxed, depends on your income, whether you expect to add associates, and your personal liability tolerance — a legal and accounting question specific to your situation, not something a general guide can settle. The useful move is timing: talk to a business attorney or CPA before filing rather than after, since restructuring an existing entity later is considerably more paperwork than choosing correctly at the start. Confirm current entity-formation rules directly with Michigan's Corporations Division before assuming a general rule applies to your specific license type.

Michigan does not extend a corporate-practice-of-medicine-style ownership bar onto counseling or marriage-and-family-therapy licensure the way it does for some medical fields, but that posture is worth confirming for your specific license type rather than assuming it carries over from what you've read about physician practices. A licensing attorney familiar with LARA's specific boards is a better source for that confirmation than a general business-formation guide.

Enrolling with Michigan's Medicaid behavioral health network

Michigan runs Medicaid behavioral health through a regional network coordinated by the Department of Health and Human Services rather than a single statewide enrollment desk — a solo clinician's Medicaid behavioral health enrollment typically routes through the regional prepaid health plan that covers the county where the practice is located, not a generic state Medicaid application. That regional structure means enrollment steps and timelines can vary by where in Michigan a practice sits.

Enrollment generally requires an active, unrestricted Michigan license, a National Provider Identifier, and a completed application through the relevant regional plan's provider-enrollment process. Because the regional structure adds a step most clinicians don't expect on their first read of the process, start well before you intend to see your first Medicaid client and confirm which regional plan covers your practice location early.

Michigan's telehealth and consent rules for therapy

Michigan sets its own requirements for what a telehealth session needs beyond a standard in-person intake, including a distinct informed-consent step and rules about which modalities — video, audio-only, or both — count as a covered telehealth visit for a given payer. A solo practice offering remote sessions needs that consent language in place before the first virtual appointment, not added retroactively after a payer flags its absence during an audit.

A cross-border session raises a separate question: a Michigan-licensed clinician seeing a client physically located in another state generally becomes subject to that state's licensure rules, determined by the client's location during the session, not the clinician's. For the current consent language and cross-border specifics, see the guidance on telehealth rules in Michigan, which this section only introduces.

The sequence: license, entity, EIN, NPI, and your first panel

These steps function less like a checklist of parallel tasks and more like a chain — each one is usually a required field on the application that follows it. A workable order: confirm independent license status with the relevant Michigan board 1Ref 1Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing (2026).Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing.Michigan licensure authority, that LARA's Bureau of Professional Licensing houses the counseling, MFT, and social work boards, and that it publishes application, fee, renewal, and supervision requirements., form the business entity, apply for an Employer Identification Number from the IRS, register a National Provider Identifier through NPPES, and only then submit Medicaid and commercial payer applications, since credentialing forms typically ask for the entity name, EIN, and NPI up front.

• License before anything else: a payer will not credential a pending or limited license.
• Entity before EIN: the IRS assigns an EIN to a specific legal entity, not to a person.
• NPI before panels: register early — an individual NPI, and an organizational one later if you add staff, both take processing time.
• Regional Medicaid enrollment and commercial panels run separately: start both as soon as your license allows rather than waiting to finish one before starting the other.

Do you need a professional will in Michigan?

A professional will is a written plan naming a colleague who will contact your active clients, secure your clinical records, and close out your caseload if you become suddenly unable to practice. Michigan's licensing boards do not condition licensure on having one, which puts the entire planning responsibility on the clinician rather than on a regulatory requirement.

A solo practice has no automatic backup the way a group practice does — no colleague already familiar with your caseload who can step in without notice. A workable professional will names a specific executor, documents how to access scheduling and records systems, and states how active clients should be notified and referred elsewhere. It takes an afternoon to draft, and without one, a medical emergency becomes an unplanned, undocumented closure for every client on your caseload.