Why we're not Ro, Hims, or any of the rest

The model is the difference

Mass-market telehealth platforms — Ro, Hims, Sequence, the dozens of compounding pharmacies that opened in the GLP-1 gold rush — are good at one thing: making prescribing fast and cheap. They are designed for volume. Every interaction is built to compress the gap between landing on the homepage and a prescription on the way to your house.

That model serves a real patient need. It also creates a real category of patient harm — and a real category of patient who doesn't fit the model at all.

Three things mass telehealth gets wrong

1. Every visit is a different clinician

Continuity of care isn't a luxury — it's how clinical medicine actually works. The physician who reads your panels in month three needs to know what your panels looked like in month one, and what you said in your intake. On most telehealth platforms, that continuity is technical at best (a shared chart) and absent at worst (a new prescriber each cycle).

2. The intake is a form, not a conversation

Real intakes uncover the thing the patient didn't think to mention. The medication they tried five years ago that gave them a side effect. The family history they assumed was unrelated. The lifestyle reality that means the standard dosing schedule won't actually fit their life. None of that comes out of a checkbox form.

3. Diagnostics are absent or optional

We don't prescribe peptides without a recent blood panel. Other practices do. The risk in skipping the panel isn't theoretical — it's the patient whose underlying condition you didn't know about because nobody looked.

What we do differently

• One medical director. From your first visit, on.
• A 45-minute intake conversation. Not a 4-minute form.
• Lab panels before any peptide or hormone protocol — every time.
• Quarterly check-ins with your medical director, with biomarker review and protocol adjustments.
• Direct messaging with your medical team. No chatbot, no support tier triage.

Who should still go with mass telehealth

If you have already done your homework, your underlying health is uncomplicated, you want a basic GLP-1 prescription, and price is your primary concern — go to Ro or Hims. They're not bad. They're just designed for a different patient than ours.

If you've been on a GLP-1 and aren't sure what's happening to your body, or you want a real diagnostic baseline before you start, or you have a complex picture (perimenopause, prior hormone work, autoimmune history) — that's the patient IHS exists for. The medications matter. The practice is what makes them work.