Life sciences / Digital health
Digital health patient acquisition measured to completed visits and month three.
Telehealth platforms with a treatment behind them, GLP-1, men's and women's health, dermatology, hair, sleep, mental health, live or die on two numbers: cost per completed first visit and retention at month three. Most spend is optimized to neither.
Provido runs acquisition for these companies inside the platform rules that get their competitors banned, and measures to the numbers investors ask about.
Why this category is harder than it looks
- Platform rules. Prescription-related telehealth needs Google healthcare certification and often LegitScript; Meta restricts weight, body, and condition-implying copy and limits health-site optimization events. Accounts get restricted mid-scale constantly.
- Unit economics. Cost per lead looks great and cost per retained patient looks terrible, because the funnel leaks between inquiry, intake, first visit, and second month.
- State coverage. Licensure and pharmacy fulfillment vary by state; campaigns that ignore the coverage map buy patients you cannot serve.
What it includes
- Compliant creative and landing pages. Outcome and situation framing, certified categories handled, claims substantiated, before-and-after rules respected.
- State-by-state campaigns with budget and reporting per state and per treatment line.
- Instant reply and intake. Eligibility and pricing questions answered by text within a minute; intake started before the patient closes the tab.
- Retention sequences. Refill reminders, month-two check-ins, and win-back for cancels. For subscription models this is where the margin is.
- HIPAA-aware tracking that lets campaigns optimize to completed visits without passing patient data.
Measurement
Cost per completed first visit, first-to-second-month retention, and cost per retained patient, by state and treatment line, weekly. Cost per lead is a diagnostic, not a headline.
Common questions
Straight answers
How do GLP-1 telehealth companies acquire patients?
Certified, compliant campaigns on Google and Meta segmented by state, landing pages that state eligibility and pricing plainly, a text reply within a minute that starts intake, and retention sequences from the first refill onward. Optimization runs to completed visits and retained patients.
Why do digital health ad accounts get banned?
Copy that implies the viewer's condition or body, before-and-after imagery, uncertified prescription categories, and pixels carrying health data. A healthcare-specific setup avoids all four.
What is a good cost per patient for a DTC telehealth platform?
It depends on treatment value and retention. The useful number is cost per retained patient at month three against contribution margin; a cheap first visit that cancels in month two is not an acquisition.
Do you work with digital health startups?
Yes. Series A through C digital health and DTC treatment platforms are a core fit: they need speed, compliance, and outcome measurement without an agency-of-record structure.
Free first step
Test your own intake tonight.
Send us one treatment line's landing page. We inquire the way a real patient would, time the reply, and send a written report in two business days. Free.
Book your 30-minute call