Summary
Some online sellers of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound also own pharmacies. Their own documents, as of 23 or 24 September 2026, answer two separate questions. One is who decides what you are prescribed. The other is who fills it. They do not show that owning a pharmacy changed anyone’s prescription or caused harm. My practice offers GLP-1 care but does not prescribe or dispense these drugs.
The 2025 annual report of Hims & Hers says most of its prescriptions are filled through pharmacies it wholly owns. Affiliated doctors make medical decisions, it says. Hims picks the pharmacy when an order is filled through it. Its patient terms, updated 31 August 2026, list six pharmacies without saying which Hims owns.
Hims also owns MedisourceRx, a California facility that can make compounded drugs in bulk. These pharmacy-made drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Hims says such facilities no longer supply its compounded GLP-1s. In December 2025 the agency warned that MedisourceRx had failed to report a side-effect complaint. In July 2026 the agency said the violations appeared to be addressed.
LifeMD owns a Pennsylvania pharmacy. Its filings say three outside pharmacies supplied 87 percent of its filling as of 30 June 2026.
LifeRx.md (not LifeMD) tells referral partners it runs its own pharmacy. Its patient consent form calls its partner pharmacies independent. I cannot tell which is right.
This is the second piece in a Tuesday series on the online GLP-1 market. The first followed the payments between an advertisement and a vial. It left one link for later: what changes when the company you buy from also owns the pharmacy that fills your prescription, and how plainly you are told.
Two public companies whose filings I read say they own pharmacies. Both also say that the clinicians who prescribe through them make the medical decisions. Those statements answer two different questions. One is who decides what you are prescribed. The other is who fills it.
This piece sets each company’s own words side by side, with federal records that can be checked against them. It does not claim that owning a pharmacy changed anyone’s prescription, or that ownership caused any harm. No document here shows either. I will say where the documents stop. Unless I say otherwise, every quotation from a company’s web page or terms is as it read on 23 or 24 September 2026.
Before I name anyone
I am a registered dietitian with commercial interests in and near this market, so they come first. My practice, Vitae Arete, is private pay, and its services include GLP-1 and weight-loss care. It does not prescribe or dispense GLP-1s. Anyone using it keeps their own prescriber and pharmacy. I offer GLP-1 practice guides to clinics, including practices that prescribe these drugs, and none has sold as of 2 October 2026. I also sell a GLP-1 guide to consumers. None of the five companies I wrote to for this piece is a client. Amazon, which runs One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, pays me royalties on my cancer nutrition books. I also have a practitioner store on Fullscript, the supplement dispensing platform, and it would pay me a margin on supplements sold through it. As of 30 September 2026 the store has made no sales. In one respect that store is closer to the concern than Hims’s arrangement. There, the person recommending is the person who would earn the margin.
Apart from Amazon’s royalties, neither I nor Vitae Arete has any business relationship with any pharmacy, compounding pharmacy, outsourcing facility or GLP-1 telehealth company. No affiliate program, no referral fees. Setting aside broad index funds, I hold no shares directly in Hims & Hers, LifeMD, Amazon, Novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly.
Owning the pharmacy is not new
One company owning the pharmacy and other links in the chain is common in American health care. Amazon is one example. It announced a One Medical GLP-1 program on 21 April 2026. Within three days the announcement was revised, and it now says: “One Medical clinicians work with patients to send prescriptions to the pharmacy of their choice.”
The public companies here keep their doctors in separate legal entities. Hims’s annual report explains why. It cites “the prohibition on the corporate practice of medicine adopted by a majority of states in the U.S.” So Hims contracts with Affiliated Medical Groups, “separate professional corporations or other professional entities owned solely by licensed physicians.” In the United Kingdom and Ireland, where the report says there is “No equivalent prohibition,” it employs doctors directly.
LifeMD contracts the same way with its own physician-owned professional corporation. In the United States the companies do not own the medical groups. Both count them in their accounts as entities they control for accounting purposes. They do own the pharmacy.
Hims says pharmacies it owns fill most of its prescriptions
Hims & Hers offers access to what its annual report for 2025 calls “certain prescription generic, brand-name and compounded medications.” A compounded drug is prepared by a pharmacy or a similar facility. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says compounded drugs are “not FDA-approved.” “The majority of prescriptions for these medications are fulfilled through our wholly-owned pharmacies,” the report’s next sentence says. That covers every prescription drug Hims offers, not GLP-1s alone.
The report lists “two licensed 503A pharmacies,” two more in the United Kingdom, and “a licensed 503B compounding outsourcing facility.” Hims also owns a peptide plant and a laboratory, not covered here.
503A and 503B are sections of federal drug law. A 503A pharmacy is a state-licensed pharmacy that compounds a drug for an individual patient, on a prescription. State boards of pharmacy generally “have primary responsibility for the day-to-day oversight” of such pharmacies, the FDA says. A 503B outsourcing facility can compound in bulk, without a prescription for each patient. It registers with the FDA and is “primarily overseen by FDA.” It must follow the agency’s manufacturing standards and meet other conditions, “such as reporting adverse events,” the FDA says.
The federal registry of National Provider Identifiers, the ID numbers health care providers bill under, lists the three in Gilbert, Arizona, New Albany, Ohio, and Los Alamitos, California. The registry is not a license.
Who decides, and who picks the pharmacy
The report answers the two questions separately. The Affiliated Medical Groups “retain sole control of clinical decision-making and the practice of medicine,” it says. Hims, for its part, “determines which Affiliated Medical Group and Provider provides the consultation.” It “sets all listed prices.” In the note explaining how it books pharmacy revenue, the report says that apart from one set of outside arrangements, Hims “has sole discretion in determining which pharmacy fills a customer’s prescription.” The pharmacies fill it “based on fulfillment instructions provided by the Company,” it adds.
Both statements are in the same document. They do not conflict. By the company’s account, the clinician decides what you are prescribed. The company decides where it is filled, when the order is filled through Hims.
Hims also gives its reasons for owning these facilities. They “allow us to lower our cost structure by reducing some of the costs typically associated with contractual third-party pharmacy relationships,” the report says. They also “provide greater flexibility, speed to market, and quality control,” the company believes.
For GLP-1s the picture is narrower. “We currently only use 503A compounding pharmacies for the fulfillment and dispensing of compounded GLP-1 products,” the annual report says. Hims “previously sourced certain compounded GLP-1 products” from 503B outsourcing facilities, it adds, “which was permitted based on a previous shortage.” That sentence does not name them. In March 2026, its quarterly report says, Hims announced a shift to branded GLP-1s, keeping access to compounded ones “on a limited scale.” When I captured Hims’s weight-loss page on 23 September 2026, every GLP-1 on it was a branded drug. I found no compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide.
What the Hims patient is told
The annual report is written for shareholders. A patient agrees to Hims’s terms and conditions, last updated 31 August 2026. They list six “Pharmacies,” the sixth a company “and its affiliates.” Two are Apostrophe Pharmacy LLC and XeCare LLC. The other four do not appear in Hims’s list of subsidiaries. A seventh, Gifthealth, is named separately as “an independent, third-party pharmacy,” for some manufacturer programs the six do not carry.
Prescriptions “may be filled by and transferred between any of the Pharmacies,” the terms say, and the patient agrees “that the Service may do so on your behalf.” They “may also be transferred among the Pharmacies without notice.” A patient “may fill the prescription at any pharmacy of your choice,” the terms also say. A weight-loss patient who fills outside the Pharmacies must get the product and pay “the pharmacy directly.”
When I searched the terms on 23 and 24 September 2026 for “owned” and for any form of “subsidiary,” both turned up only in general language. The terms do not say which of the pharmacies Hims owns. I found no mention of MedisourceRx or Seaview. The two owned pharmacies do appear with Hims among the “Hims & Hers Parties” a patient releases from claims. I read the terms, not the checkout pages, consent forms or labels a patient also sees.
LifeMD’s pharmacy
LifeMD, the other public company here, describes “a state-of-the-art wholly-owned affiliated commercial pharmacy.” It announced the pharmacy in November 2024: 22,500 square feet in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, “designed to fill up to 5,000 daily prescriptions.” Its list of subsidiaries names LifeMD Pharmacy Services, LLC, a Delaware company. The federal registry lists it in Lancaster. In September 2025, the report says, the pharmacy added “non-sterile compounding capabilities for oral and topical medications.” An injection has to be sterile, and the report describes only non-sterile compounding.
The same filings describe outside pharmacies doing most of the filling. One third-party pharmacy supplied 71 percent of the company’s total fulfillment services as of 31 December 2025, the annual report says. By 30 June 2026, the quarterly report says, three third-party pharmacies supplied 87 percent. Both figures cover the whole company, not GLP-1s alone. For some branded GLP-1s the annual report names the pharmacies: Gifthealth, which it calls LillyDirect’s “pharmacy provider,” for Zepbound vials, and CenterWell Pharmacy, “Novo Nordisk’s pharmacy partner,” for Wegovy and Ozempic.
LifeMD’s terms, last updated 17 November 2025, say weight-management medication “is paid for separately and fulfilled through a third-party pharmacy.” A sub-program “where medication is specifically disclosed as included” is the exception. “Your provider will send your prescription to your local pharmacy,” its weight-management page says. If that pharmacy does not have it, the page says, LifeMD “can explore other options that can be mailed directly to your door.” Compounded medication “is prepared by a state-licensed sterile compounding pharmacy partner,” it says. Every GLP-1 product the page offered by name was branded.
MedisourceRx is here because Hims owned it when the FDA inspected it, and its record is public. Hims says its compounded GLP-1s now go only through 503A pharmacies. MedisourceRx is a 503B facility.
Hims bought MedisourceRx in September 2024 for $31.0 million “for accounting purposes,” paid in cash and Class A stock. It valued the facility’s “503B pharmacy license” at $28.6 million of that. Most of the price, by Hims’s own accounting, was the license. The FDA’s list of registered outsourcing facilities, updated 8 September 2026, shows MedisourceRx first registered on 14 February 2017, years before Hims owned it.
FDA investigators inspected the facility from 27 May to 10 June 2025. On 12 December 2025 the agency sent it a warning letter. A warning letter is the agency’s account, not a court’s finding. The company can answer or dispute it.
The letter lists two specific failures:
1. You failed to submit the adverse event report identified in Complaint Log # C25004.
2. Your documented procedures for reporting adverse events do not adequately define what constitutes a “serious” adverse event (21 CFR 310.305(b)).
Because of them, the letter says, the facility’s compounded products “are not eligible for the exemptions” in section 503B. A failure to report adverse events “is a prohibited act,” it says. It calls the violations it cites “not intended to be an all-inclusive statement of violations.” It says some corrective actions “appear adequate”: the facility had “retroactively submitted reports of serious, unexpected adverse event reports received prior to FDA’s inspection.” In the FDA’s view, the procedures it sent still did not clearly define a serious event.
STAT’s Ed Silverman reported these details on 9 February 2026. BioSpace followed the next day. A Hims spokesperson told STAT, BioSpace reported, that “Patient safety and regulatory compliance are foundational to how we operate.”
Hims disclosed the letter in its annual report. The company “timely responded,” it says.
On 27 July 2026 the FDA sent a close-out letter. “Based on our evaluation, it appears that you have adequately addressed the violations contained in this warning letter,” it says. The close-out, it adds, “will not preclude any future regulatory action should violations be observed during a subsequent inspection or through other means.” I checked the FDA’s warning letter database again on 24 September 2026. It showed nothing newer.
What three other sellers say
Three other sellers make claims about pharmacies in their own public documents.
Eden, which sells through eden.health, puts it most directly. “A pharmacy we actually run,” its weight-loss page says. “Most telehealth brands send your prescription somewhere else.” It names Albuquerque, New Mexico. The federal registry lists Eden Pharmacy, LLC at an Albuquerque address. The same page says “online evaluations with independent licensed medical professionals determine prescription appropriateness.” Prescriptions, it says, “can be filled at network pharmacies unless you specify otherwise.”
In June the FDA sent a warning letter, which I covered in September, about Eden’s tryeden.com site. It went to Eden Health International, the company named in the footer of eden.health. It said the compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide pictured on the site carried Eden’s name on the label, “suggesting Eden is the compounder of those drugs when in fact it is not.” The letter is about who compounded the drugs and how they were labeled. It does not say whether Eden runs a pharmacy. Dispensing is not compounding.
The FDA reviewed tryeden.com in March 2026. The eden.health page I quote is from 23 September. I checked the FDA’s warning letter database on 24 September 2026. It showed no close-out letter for Eden. I asked Eden what changed.
Willow, which sells through startwillow.com, says on its affiliate page that it “connects patients with independent, licensed physicians.” Its terms of service, last updated 14 August 2026, describe the physicians as “employed or under contract with Willow’s affiliated physician practice(s),” and say “Willow does not own the Medical Practice.” Both statements can be true at once. They answer different questions.
On the pharmacy side, the terms say Willow “is not a health care provider or pharmacy,” and they speak of “pharmacies affiliated with Willow.” I searched them, as they read on 23 September 2026, for every form of the word own and found no statement that Willow owns a pharmacy.
Some of Willow’s “shareholders, directors, officers, contractors, or employees may have a financial interest in the Medical Practice, the Pharmacies, or any other third party supplier,” they say. The one tie they name is medical. The practice’s president is Willow’s chief medical officer and “receives compensation from Willow, including but not limited to an equity interest in Willow.” I found no one named with an interest in the pharmacies. A patient can ask the physician to send a prescription “to the pharmacy of your choice,” the terms say, and then pays “that pharmacy directly.”
LifeRx.md, based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and not to be confused with LifeMD, describes its pharmacy differently in different documents. Its advocates site tells prospective referral partners: “We operate our own brick-and-mortar pharmacy, ensuring quality and trust for every customer you refer.” Its consent document for patients, dated 1 January 2026, reads differently. “LifeRx.md does not provide medical or pharmacy services and does not control clinical decision-making,” it says. Its “Pharmacy Partners” are “licensed pharmacies with which LifeRx.md has commercial arrangements for prescription fulfillment.” It calls them “independent entities.” “You may choose any pharmacy,” it tells the patient.
LifeRx.md’s weight-loss page says “GLP-1 prescriptions ship directly from licensed U.S. partner pharmacies” and “All of our prescriptions are filled by 503A pharmacies.” I cannot tell you which description is right. I asked. A search of the NPI registry for “LifeRx” on 23 September 2026 found LifeRx.md’s own entry, registered as a medical practice, and no pharmacy under its name. A pharmacy can register under another name.
What I cannot tell you
I cannot tell you that owning a pharmacy changed anyone’s prescription, or that ownership caused any harm. No document I read says so.
I cannot tell you which pharmacy fills a given GLP-1 order at Hims. Its terms name six “Pharmacies,” plus Gifthealth for some manufacturer programs, and do not say which of the six Hims owns. When I searched its annual and quarterly reports on 24 September 2026, neither named a pharmacy for GLP-1 orders. Neither mentioned the other four “Pharmacies” by name.
I cannot tell you who fills LifeMD’s sub-programs that include medication. Nor can I say whether Willow has a financial stake in the pharmacies it calls affiliated, or which of LifeRx.md’s descriptions of its pharmacy is accurate.
I did not check any state’s pharmacy license records. I also did not look at whether any state requires a telehealth company to tell patients it owns the pharmacy. That takes a fifty-state legal survey. I have not done it.
This is not a market survey. It covers the companies whose documents I read.
I asked them
On 24 September I wrote to Hims & Hers, LifeMD, Eden, Willow and LifeRx.md. I quoted each company the language this piece takes from its documents, with dates. I asked which pharmacy fills each company’s GLP-1 orders, whether the company owns it, and what patients are told. I asked whether I had anything wrong. I set a deadline of 5 p.m. Eastern on 8 October and offered to print each answer in full or in summary. Willow’s patient services team replied that day that it had passed my questions to its leadership. As of 13 October, none had answered.
What comes next
The next piece asks who has the power to act on any of this. After it come two more. One covers what a month costs once every fee is counted. The other covers the federal court rulings on whether a prescriber’s decision breaks the chain between a telehealth company’s advertising and a drugmaker’s lost sale.
This is general education and a reading of public documents. It is not legal advice or individual medical advice, and nothing here is a claim that any company or person named has broken a law. Decisions about your own treatment belong with your own clinician.
References
Hims & Hers Health, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, with Exhibit 21 (Subsidiaries). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, accession 0001773751-26-000022. Filed 23 February 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1773751/000177375126000022/hims-20251231.htm and https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1773751/000177375126000022/hims-20251231x10kxexhibit21.htm (accessed 23 September 2026)
Hims & Hers Health, Inc. Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, accession 0001773751-26-000163. Filed 10 August 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1773751/000177375126000163/hims-20260630.htm (accessed 23 September 2026)
Hims & Hers. Terms and Conditions. Last updated 31 August 2026. https://www.hims.com/terms-and-conditions (accessed 23 and 24 September 2026)
Hims & Hers. Weight loss page. https://www.hims.com/weight-loss (accessed 23 September 2026)
LifeMD, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, with Exhibit 21.1 (Subsidiaries). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, accession 0001493152-26-009549. Filed 10 March 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/948320/000149315226009549/form10-k.htm and https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/948320/000149315226009549/ex21-1.htm (accessed 23 September 2026)
LifeMD, Inc. Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, accession 0001493152-26-036200. Filed 5 August 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/948320/000149315226036200/form10-q.htm (accessed 23 September 2026)
LifeMD. Terms & Conditions. Last updated 17 November 2025. https://lifemd.com/terms (accessed 24 September 2026)
LifeMD. Weight Management Program Overview. https://lifemd.com/weight-management (accessed 23 and 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Registered Outsourcing Facilities: Facilities Registered as Human Drug Compounding Outsourcing Facilities Under Section 503B of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Updated as of 8 September 2026. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/registered-outsourcing-facilities (accessed 23 September 2026; checked again 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Form FDA 483, Inspectional Observations, MedisourceRx, Los Alamitos, California. Inspection 27 May to 10 June 2025; issued 10 June 2025. Linked from the list above. https://www.fda.gov/media/187955/download (accessed 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Warning Letter to MedisourceRx, MARCS-CMS 717970. 12 December 2025. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/medisourcerx-717970-12122025 (accessed 23 September 2026; checked again 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Close-out Letter to MedisourceRx, MARCS-CMS 717970. 27 July 2026. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/medisourcerx-717970-07272026 (accessed 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Warning Letter to Eden Health International Inc. dba Eden, MARCS-CMS 728279. 8 June 2026. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/eden-health-international-inc-dba-eden-728279-06082026 (accessed 23 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Warning letter database, entries for MedisourceRx and for Eden Health International Inc. dba Eden (response and close-out fields). https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/compliance-actions-and-activities/warning-letters (searched 24 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Compounding and the FDA: Questions and Answers. Content current as of 16 September 2025. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/compounding-and-fda-questions-and-answers (accessed 23 September 2026)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Information for Outsourcing Facilities. Content current as of 29 March 2022. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/information-outsourcing-facilities (accessed 23 September 2026)
Federal Trade Commission. FTC Releases Second Interim Staff Report on Prescription Drug Middlemen. Press release, 14 January 2025. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-releases-second-interim-staff-report-prescription-drug-middlemen (accessed 24 September 2026)
Amazon. Amazon One Medical GLP-1 management program with upfront medication costs. First published 21 April 2026; revised between 22 and 24 April 2026 (Internet Archive captures); updated 15 September 2026. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-glp1-management-program (accessed 24 September 2026)
Internet Archive, Wayback Machine. Captures of the Amazon announcement above, 21 April 2026 to 24 April 2026. The pharmacy-of-their-choice sentence is absent from the capture of 22 April 2026, 16:10 UTC, and present in the capture of 24 April 2026, 03:09 UTC. https://web.archive.org/web/20260424030923/https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-glp1-management-program (accessed 24 September 2026)
Silverman E. FDA warned a Hims & Hers compounder after finding bugs and failing to report a serious side effect. STAT (Pharmalot). 9 February 2026. https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2026/02/09/fda-inspection-warns-hims-compounder-bugs-wegovy/ (accessed 24 September 2026; subscriber article, preview read)
Manalac T. Hims & Hers’ Woes Compound as FDA Hits Company With Warning Letter. BioSpace. 10 February 2026, updated 12 February 2026. https://www.biospace.com/fda/hims-hers-woes-compound-as-fda-hits-company-with-warning-letter (accessed 24 September 2026)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. NPPES NPI Registry. Organization searches for Seaview Enterprises (MedisourceRx), Apostrophe, XeCare, LifeMD, LifeRx and Eden (New Mexico). https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/ (searched 23 September 2026)
Eden. Doctor-Guided GLP-1 Weight Loss Plans. https://www.eden.health/glp-1/weight-loss (accessed 23 September 2026)
Willow Health Services, Inc. Willow Affiliate Program (page footer). Undated web page. https://www.startwillow.com/affiliate-program (accessed 23 September 2026)
Willow Health Services, Inc. Terms of Service. Last updated 14 August 2026. https://www.startwillow.com/terms-of-service (accessed 23 September 2026)
LifeRx.md. LifeRx Advocates Program. Undated web page. https://www.liferxadvocates.com/ (accessed 23 September 2026)
LifeRx.md. Informed Consent for Telehealth Services. Effective and last updated 1 January 2026. https://liferx.md/telehealth-consent (accessed 24 September 2026)
LifeRx.md. GLP-1 Weight Management page. https://liferx.md/weight-loss (accessed 23 September 2026; unchanged on 24 September 2026)
Fee J. Your Trainer May Get $50 If You Start a GLP-1. Vitae Arete (Substack). 24 September 2026. https://vitaearete.substack.com/p/your-trainer-may-get-50-if-you-start
This article is general nutrition education, not individualized medical or nutrition advice, and it does not create a dietitian–client relationship. Medications and their side effects should be managed with your prescribing clinician. See the full disclaimer.