THE QUESTIONS WE GET MOST
What it takes to add a peptide program to your practice.
Most practice owners have the same five questions before they start. Here are honest answers, including the parts that are harder than they look.
01 Do I need a medical director?
For prescription peptides and hormones, yes. These are prescription medications, which means a licensed provider has to evaluate the patient and write the order. What that provider needs to be, and how closely they must supervise, varies significantly by state. Some states allow nurse practitioners full practice authority. Others require physician supervision with specific documentation. This is the single biggest barrier for aesthetician-led practices, and it is solvable.
02 Where do the medications actually come from?
Compounded peptides come from licensed 503A compounding pharmacies, which prepare medications for individual patients based on a prescription. Which pharmacy you work with determines your formulary, your pricing, and your reliability, and pharmacy access varies by state licensure. This area has also seen meaningful regulatory change recently, particularly around GLP-1 medications, so current guidance matters more than what was true a year ago.
03 Is this compliant?
It can be, and the details matter. The structure has to respect scope of practice, prescription requirements, corporate practice of medicine rules in your state, and advertising restrictions on what you can claim. Most compliance problems we see are not from bad intent, they come from practices copying what a competitor is doing without knowing whether that competitor set it up correctly.
04 What should I charge?
Program pricing depends on your medication costs, your provider costs, your patient demographics, and whether you are selling single treatments or ongoing programs. Recurring program structures generally outperform one-off pricing for both patient outcomes and practice economics. The practices that struggle usually priced from what a competitor charges rather than from their own cost structure.
05 How long does it take?
Three to four weeks from first conversation to first patient, if the clinical partnership and pharmacy relationships are already in place. Practices that assemble this alone typically take considerably longer, and most stall at finding the clinical partner.
Still have questions?
A discovery call is the fastest way to find out what this would look like for your specific practice and state.