Check care · start with names
Who is behind the care?
Have a service in mind? Ask for names you can check before working through the offer.
The clinician
Start with a real name
The health professional doing your assessment is called the clinician. Ask for their full name, role and the board that holds their licence.
Under federal guidance current on 26 September 2026, your location during a visit determines which state must permit the clinician to treat you.
They need a licence or other state permission there.
A licence in the state where they work is not enough on its own.
For a doctor’s licence and any board-imposed discipline, you can consult the public records held by state medical boards.
Discipline means action the board takes against a doctor for breaking its rules.
The quality of a doctor’s care cannot be judged from a record showing no public discipline.
Source Medical-board consumer guide Find a state medical board
Use the board named for that person’s role. Match the full name and licence details. Ask the service for an explanation if those details do not line up.
The pharmacy
Find out who sends the medicine
You can reach the pharmacy-licence search for each state through links provided by the FDA.
The agency advises against using an online pharmacy unless it appears in that state’s list.
A listed licence still does not prove that every medicine is being supplied properly.
Ask the service for the name before trying to check it. A badge on a web page is no replacement for looking up the record.
A made-to-order offer
Ask why the medicine needs to differ
Compounding prepares medicine for an order; it differs from supplying a drug company’s finished product.
Compounded medicines lacked FDA approval on 26 September 2026.
Their safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality received no FDA check before they were sold.
The FDA had declared the semaglutide injection shortage over on 21 February 2025.
One pharmacy’s empty shelf does not establish a nationwide shortage.
Source FDA explanation of compounding FDA shortage and copying policy
A prescriber is the health professional who writes the prescription, an order for medicine.
Under this rule, a copy matches the medicine ingredient, has a similar strength, and is taken in the same way.
A dose contains an amount of medicine; that amount is its strength.
As of 26 September 2026, an ordinary pharmacy could not make these copies as routine work or in unusually large amounts.
A change may qualify for an exception when it matters in an important way to a particular patient.
The prescriber must decide that the change matters for that patient and put the reason in writing.
Lower cost alone does not count as that difference.
The FDA gives examples of needs an approved product may not meet.
A patient may be allergic to a dye in it, or unable to swallow a pill.
Ask which change is being proposed for you and why. An example alone does not answer that question.
Check the words in the offer
Open the answer behind the claim
These questions help untangle terms that can sound more settled than they are.
On an offer, FDA registration means a facility has sent its details to the FDA for a record.
A drug listing is a record of a medicine.
Neither record means the FDA has approved the facility or the medicine.
As of 17 September 2026, some facilities on the FDA compounding list had not yet been inspected.
Source What FDA registration and listing mean FDA list with inspection records
An approved generic medicine copies a brand-name product.
Does an FDA registration record mean approval?
As of 26 September 2026, a facility’s FDA registration did not mean the FDA had approved it.
A medicine’s entry in an FDA drug list did not mean the medicine was approved.
The FDA also does not approve health care providers.
Source Federal registration rule FDA explanation of approval
Is a made-to-order medicine an approved generic?
As of 26 September 2026, no FDA-approved generic semaglutide was on sale in the U.S.
Calling a compounded product an approved medicine’s generic is misleading, according to the FDA.
Source FDA drug application records FDA guide to claims about compounding
Does adding a vitamin settle the compounding question?
As of 26 September 2026, the FDA’s copying rules could still apply to semaglutide with an added vitamin.
The FDA gives semaglutide with added vitamin B12 as an example that may still count as a copy.
To use the patient exception, the prescriber must write down why the change matters in an important way for that individual.