How Providers Are Scored

The short version

Each provider gets a score out of ten, built from seven checks. Every check is worth the same, so a company that meets all seven scores 10.0 and a company that meets four scores about 5.7.

The seven checks measure what a company is willing to disclose before you pay. They do not measure the quality of its care, and that distinction is the most important thing on this page.

Paid partners appear first in comparison listings. Within the paid and unpaid groups, providers are ordered by score. Commission does not change the seven-check score; it does affect which group appears first.

The seven checks

Pharmacy named. Does the company say in public which compounding pharmacy or outsourcing facility fills its orders? “A licensed US pharmacy” is not a name, and it does not pass.

Price published. Can a reader find a medication or care price on the company's own site before starting an intake? The accompanying qualifier explains the billing period and what the figure covers. A published care fee does not establish the total medication cost.

All fifty states. Does the company treat patients in every state, or does its own coverage list stop short of that?

Brand available. Can a reader get an FDA-approved GLP-1 through this company, or only a compounded preparation?

Prescriber named. Does the company name an individual clinician or medical director on its own site? “Our board-certified physicians” is not a name you can look up, and it does not pass.

Ongoing rate published. Is the headline monthly figure the rate that keeps applying, rather than a first-month promotion or a number that quietly requires paying a year up front?

Membership terms stated. Does the company say what its membership situation is — that one applies, that it is included, or that none exists? Silence is the one answer that fails.

Each check is recorded as a plain yes or no, taken from what the company publishes. None of the seven is inferred from marketing copy or from how confident a page sounds.

What the score is not

The score is a disclosure-and-transparency measure. It is not a clinical quality judgment, and it should not be read as one.

It says nothing about whether a company's clinicians are good, whether a medication will work for you, whether shipping arrives on time, or whether support answers.

A provider can score 10.0 and still be a poor fit for you. A provider can score lower and be exactly right. The number tells you how much a company shows you before you pay, and no more.

Whether any of this suits your health is a question for a prescriber, not for a scoreboard.

Prices, and the date attached to every one

Every price is taken from the company's own published page and stored with the date it was read and the address it came from.

A price never appears without its qualifier. A starting rate, a first-month rate, a prepaid-commitment rate, and a bundle rate are four different things, and dropping the qualifier turns a true figure into a false one.

Prices in this market move quickly. The verification date is there so a reader can judge how stale a figure might be and check the source before acting on it.

FDA warning letters are disclosed, never scored

A warning letter does not change a score or a ranking position here. It is disclosed on the company's review, along with what the letter actually concerned.

A letter's meaning depends on the violations the FDA describes. A finding about marketing or labeling should not be presented as a laboratory finding about a medication's contents.

The review explains the specific findings and links the agency's letter so readers can assess its scope. The disclosure score is not a medication safety assessment.

What is deliberately left out of the score

Reviews, ratings, and testimonials are not scored. They are easy to buy and hard to verify, so they carry no weight in the number.

Marketing seals and badges are not scored on their own. A seal is worth something only when it resolves to a live certificate that matches the company, and that is a note on the review rather than a point in the score.

Price is not scored either. Whether a price is published is a check; whether it is low is a fact for the table, not a virtue the score rewards.

When a score changes

A score moves when one of the seven checks moves, and only then.

If a company starts naming its pharmacy, or publishes a price it used to keep behind an intake form, that check flips and the score follows. Nothing else shifts it.