Providers at LifeMD, a telehealth company that Novo Nordisk lists on its own website as a legitimate source for GLP-1 drugs, were at times expected to clear 25 patient cases an hour. That is about two minutes per person, working from the electronic intake forms patients filled out and little else.
That account comes from five former employees and two lawsuits filed by former company leaders, published in a STAT News investigation ↗ this week. Former staff describe a company that pushed clinicians to write more prescriptions faster, with minimal screening and follow-up. Some said providers were discouraged from asking medically relevant questions because that could slow care down. LifeMD strenuously denies the allegations.
The drugs at the center of this are the ones everyone is talking about. Semaglutide and tirzepatide are the injectable GLP-1 ↗ medicines that Novo Nordisk sells as Wegovy and Ozempic and Eli Lilly sells as Zepbound and Mounjaro. Demand has outrun the clinics that used to gatekeep them, and a large, loosely regulated layer of telehealth companies has grown up to meet it. Novo Nordisk names several of those companies, LifeMD among them, as approved partners for patients who want the real branded drug rather than a compounded copy.
Why two minutes is the problem
Semaglutide ↗ and tirzepatide ↗ are not low-stakes prescriptions. The labels carry a boxed warning tied to thyroid C-cell tumors seen in rodents, which means anyone with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer or the genetic syndrome MEN2 should not take them. Both drugs slow the stomach, which is how they curb appetite, but that same effect can turn dangerous in people with a history of pancreatitis, severe gastroparesis, or gallbladder disease. None of that is visible on a one-page intake form, and none of it gets caught in two minutes.
The screening problem is bigger than one company. A Yale secret-shopper study ↗ tested 49 online sellers of semaglutide and tirzepatide and found that 45 of them issued a prescription, most within a day, and two approved compounded orders in under five minutes. The pattern the STAT investigation describes at one named, Novo-endorsed company is the same pattern researchers found across the market.
The uncomfortable part for Novo
Novo Nordisk has spent much of 2026 trying to clean up the compounding side of this market, sending warning letters and suing sellers of knockoff semaglutide. We covered one such case when compounded GLP-1 copies kept selling in two states ↗ after the shortage that made them legal had ended. The LifeMD reporting points at the other side of the same coin. The telehealth firms Novo holds up as the safe, legitimate alternative to compounders are selling the branded drug through the same fast-intake funnel, and at least one of them is now accused of prioritizing prescription volume over the screening those drugs actually need.
The drugs work. That was never the question. The question is whether a two-minute review is enough to decide who should be on them, and five former employees at a company Novo Nordisk vouches for say the answer inside the building was no.