What a QuickMD visit actually covers
QuickMD sells one video visit at a time, at a flat cash price of $99, with no membership behind it and nothing recurring to cancel. Its busiest line is opioid use disorder treatment, where that fee buys the consult plus one follow-up within 14 days, while the medicine, any labs and any counseling are arranged and paid for separately. Insurance is never billed, so the full cost of the visit lands on you, which suits people who want fast access or want the encounter kept off an insurance claims record. The clinical side reads as ordinary telemedicine with US-licensed clinicians, and the weak spot sits after the call, where public complaints cluster around prescription status and slow customer service. Most of what a QuickMD review has to weigh is that gap between a straightforward consult and the follow-through around it.
The $99 visit fee, and everything outside it
Pricing here works per visit, not per month. That one distinction changes the arithmetic against subscription telehealth, where a single recurring charge often bundles medication, messaging and scheduled check-ins into one number.
What the fee buys
What the $99 Visit Fee Covers vs. What Bills Separately
| Included in $99 fee | Paid separately | |
|---|---|---|
| Clinician consult | ✓ | |
| One follow-up within 14 days (addiction only) | ✓ | |
| Medication | At your pharmacy | |
| Lab work | If required | |
| Counseling or therapy | Not bundled | |
| Further visits after follow-up window | Per visit fee |
A visit fee buys clinician time and a clinical decision. For addiction treatment, the published price also carries one follow-up within 14 days, which matters because the first fortnight of treatment is when doses most often need adjusting.
When a prescription is appropriate, the clinician sends it to the pharmacy you name. When it is not appropriate, you have still paid for the visit. Prescription medicines through telemedicine always require an evaluation by a licensed prescriber, and no platform can promise what that evaluation will conclude.
What bills separately
- The medication itself, paid at your pharmacy in cash or through your pharmacy benefit.
- Lab work, if a clinician wants baseline or ongoing testing.
- Counseling or therapy, which is not bundled into addiction visits.
- Any in-person care that a video clinician cannot provide.
- Further visits, once the included follow-up window has passed.
Doing the annual arithmetic
Ninety-nine dollars is easy to absorb once. Ongoing care is a different sum. If your clinician wants monthly contact for buprenorphine or a GLP-1, the visit fees stack up across a year, and the medicine sits on top of them. Compare that total against a subscription service that folds visits and medication into one monthly charge before assuming per-visit is cheaper.
What a year actually costs
Programmes quote a monthly headline. Add the medication, the labs and the renewal price and the real number is usually different.
Advertised prices change often and intro pricing rarely lasts. Ask what the renewal rate is before you commit to a plan.
Quick tip: Ask about the refund policy before your card is charged, and keep the answer in writing inside the app.
Cash pay only, and what that costs you
QuickMD does not bill insurance. You pay the visit fee yourself, at the point of booking, whatever coverage you hold. That is a genuine trade for some people: no prior authorisation, no network rules, and no telehealth claim landing in your plan record.
The cost of that trade is obvious. Medicare, Medicaid and commercial plans pay for a great deal of telehealth, including care for opioid use disorder through participating clinicians, so a cash-pay route means paying out of pocket for something your plan might otherwise cover. Check what your own plan pays before you decide, starting with the Medicare telehealth coverage page if you are on Medicare.
Your medication is a separate transaction at the pharmacy, so a cash-pay visit does not stop you using pharmacy benefits for the prescription. Generic buprenorphine and naloxone films are often covered even when the visit is not.
Insurance or cash pay, which is cheaper
Going through insurance is not automatically cheaper. Deductibles, copays and prior authorisation can make a cash-pay programme the better deal.
Coverage is never something a programme can promise: plans decide, prior authorisation is routine for GLP-1 medicines, and denials are common. Confirm with your own plan before choosing.
Buprenorphine and naloxone: the line most people book
Opioid use disorder treatment is the reason most searchers land on this service, and it is the only line with a follow-up written into the advertised price.
How the visit is meant to work
You book a video appointment, discuss your history and current use with a licensed clinician, and if buprenorphine and naloxone is appropriate, the prescription goes to your pharmacy. The included follow-up within 14 days gives you one paid-for chance to report back on how the starting dose is holding.
Federal and state rules on prescribing buprenorphine by telemedicine have shifted repeatedly in recent years, and requirements can differ by state. Ask the clinician directly what applies where you live, and whether an in-person visit will be needed at any point to continue treatment.
Starting treatment and the precipitated withdrawal risk
Buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist, which means it occupies opioid receptors without producing the full effect of a stronger opioid. Taken too soon after another opioid, it can displace that drug and trigger sudden, severe withdrawal. Patient guidance from MedlinePlus on buprenorphine and naloxone is explicit that the first dose is timed to the onset of withdrawal symptoms, not to convenience.
That timing is the single most important thing to settle during the visit. Write down what your clinician tells you about when to take the first dose, what withdrawal signs to look for, and who to contact if the dose feels wrong.
Side effects and warnings worth knowing
Common effects include headache, nausea, constipation, sweating, sleep problems and mouth numbness with films or tablets that dissolve under the tongue. Serious risks include dangerous breathing problems, particularly when the medicine is combined with benzodiazepines, alcohol or other sedatives. Dental problems have been reported with buprenorphine products dissolved in the mouth, and rinsing with water after the dose is standard advice.
Tell your clinician about liver disease, breathing conditions, pregnancy and every other medicine you take, including anything bought without a prescription. If breathing becomes slow or shallow, or you cannot be woken easily, that is an emergency, not a support ticket.
Counseling is not part of the fee
Medication is one part of opioid use disorder treatment. Therapy, peer support and recovery groups are the other part, and none of them come bundled here. For some patients that is fine, because they already have a counselor or a group. For others, the absence of built-in support is the strongest argument for a program that includes it. SAMHSA’s National Helpline, on 1-800-662-4357, is a free route to local treatment referrals if you need to build that side yourself.
Refills between visits
Per-visit care puts refill timing on you. Nobody is watching a calendar on your behalf between appointments. Book the next visit before the current supply runs low, keep your pharmacy’s phone number handy, and confirm during the call which pharmacy the script was sent to and how long it should take to appear.
Weight loss visits and GLP-1 prescribing
Weight management is one of the lines the company’s own app listings advertise alongside addiction treatment and urgent care. The visit model is the same: you pay per consult, and the medicine is a separate cost at the pharmacy.
What the clinician is deciding
A GLP-1 receptor agonist, meaning an incretin-based medicine such as semaglutide, is a prescription decision based on your weight history, other conditions and medicines. A paid visit does not oblige a clinician to write one. Ask before booking what a weight loss visit costs on this platform, since fees outside the addiction line need confirming individually.
Compounded versus FDA-approved products
Ask plainly whether any prescription would be for an FDA-approved product or a compounded version. The FDA has published concerns about unapproved GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss, including dosing errors and products that have not been reviewed for safety, quality or effectiveness. That difference affects both your risk and your monthly cost, and it is worth settling before money changes hands. Our GLP-1 telehealth comparison sets out how the two supply routes usually price out.
Side effects and monitoring
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation and abdominal pain are the common complaints, and they cluster around dose increases. Serious risks noted in patient labelling for semaglutide injection include pancreatitis, gallbladder problems, kidney injury from dehydration and eye changes in people with diabetic retinopathy. These medicines carry a boxed warning about thyroid C-cell tumours seen in rodents, and they are not for people with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2.
Slow dose escalation and regular check-ins are how those risks are managed. In a per-visit model, each of those check-ins is a fresh fee, so agree the follow-up rhythm and its cost up front. More detail on what to watch sits in our semaglutide side effects and monitoring notes.
The medicine is the real cost
For weight loss, the consult is rarely the expensive part. Brand-name GLP-1s carry high cash prices, and coverage varies sharply by plan. Price the medication at your own pharmacy before you pay for the visit that produces the prescription.
Urgent care visits: useful range, hard limits
What a video visit handles well
Short-term, low-complexity problems are the natural fit: rashes, suspected urinary tract infections, sinus symptoms, pink eye, travel questions and similar. A clinician can assess, advise and prescribe a short course of treatment where appropriate, usually faster than a primary care appointment and far cheaper than an emergency room.
When to stop and seek in-person care
A camera cannot examine an abdomen, listen properly to a chest or run a test. Chest pain, breathing difficulty, one-sided weakness, severe abdominal pain, high fever in an infant, or any symptom that is worsening quickly belongs in person or in an emergency department. Paying for a video visit in those situations wastes both money and time.
Controlled substances beyond buprenorphine
Searches about stimulant prescribing come up constantly, so treat this as the practical answer: do not book a visit assuming a stimulant such as Adderall will be prescribed. Telehealth prescribing of Schedule II stimulants is tightly restricted, many platforms decline it entirely, and requirements vary by state. Confirm with support in writing whether the service line exists at all before you pay a fee.
Mental health, menopause and the other lines
The company’s own marketing describes further lines including mental health and hormone-related care. Those pages change more often than the addiction service, and the fee attached to each one needs confirming individually at booking rather than assumed from the headline visit price.
The clinical caution is the same across all of them. A single video consult is a good way to start a conversation and a poor way to manage a complex, long-running condition without a plan for follow-up. Ask what happens at visit two, and what it costs, before you commit to visit one.
How the service lines compare
| Service line | Typical reason to book | Follow-up built into the fee | What you arrange yourself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Addiction treatment | Starting or continuing buprenorphine and naloxone | One follow-up within 14 days | Pharmacy fill, counseling, any lab work |
| Weight loss | Assessment for GLP-1 or other weight management treatment | Each further visit is booked and paid for separately | Medication cost, labs, dose check-ins |
| Urgent care | Short-term minor illness or infection | Each further visit is booked and paid for separately | Pharmacy fill, in-person care if symptoms escalate |
| Other advertised lines | Ongoing symptoms managed by video | Confirm at booking | Therapy, labs, referrals, fee confirmation |
Booking a visit, step by step
Step 1: Check your state
Coverage is state by state and varies by service line, so confirm your state appears for the specific care you want before creating an account. Rules for controlled substances are the usual reason a state list differs from the general one.
Step 2: Create an account and choose the visit type
Sign up through the website or the mobile app, then pick the visit category. The category you choose determines the fee and the clinician you are routed to.
Step 3: Pay the visit fee
Payment comes before the consult, by card. This is the point to have already asked about refunds, because you are paying for clinician time rather than a guaranteed prescription.
Step 4: Complete the intake
Expect questions on your medical history, current medicines, allergies and, for addiction visits, your recent opioid use. Accuracy here directly affects safety, particularly the timing advice for a first buprenorphine dose.
Step 5: Take the video visit
Join at the scheduled time on a device with a working camera. Before the clinician leaves the call, confirm three things: the medicine and dose, the exact pharmacy it is being sent to, and when to expect it.
Step 6: Collect and diarise
Call your pharmacy rather than waiting passively if nothing appears. Then put your next visit in a calendar, since no subscription reminder exists to do it for you.
The app, the portal and the prescription-status problem
The mobile app is listed on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, and it describes video visits with US-licensed, board-certified clinicians across addiction treatment, weight loss and urgent care. Booking and joining a visit through it is the intended path, and for many people that part works as advertised.
The recurring complaint in public forums is not about the video call. It is about what the app shows afterwards. Patients describe having no clear view of whether a prescription was actually sent, which pharmacy received it, or where a request sits in a queue. In a per-visit model with no assigned care team, that blind spot is the thing most likely to sour the experience.
The practical defence is to treat the pharmacy as your source of truth. Get the pharmacy name and phone number during the call, then confirm directly with the pharmacy rather than refreshing an app screen.
Support, refills and escalation
Support is the weakest part of this operation on the public record. Threads and service reviews repeatedly describe long waits for replies, difficulty reaching a person, and charges disputed after a prescription failed to arrive. Individual accounts cannot be verified one by one, but the pattern is consistent enough to plan around.
Escalation matters more here than at a subscription service, because the platform holds no ongoing relationship with you between visits. If something goes wrong, work in this order: message support inside the app so a written record exists, call your pharmacy to check for an inbound prescription, and if you were charged for a service you never received, raise it with your card issuer while keeping copies of every message.
Refill reliability is a function of your own planning. Book early, keep at least a few days of buffer before you run out, and never let a lapse happen quietly with buprenorphine, where an interruption carries real clinical risk.
Privacy and your medical record
Paying cash keeps the visit off an insurance claim, which is a legitimate privacy benefit for people who do not want addiction treatment appearing in a plan record. It does not make the visit invisible. A licensed clinician still creates a medical record, and a prescription still exists at the pharmacy.
Before you sign up, read the privacy policy for four specific things: what data the company collects beyond your clinical record, whether any of it is shared with advertising or analytics partners, which parts of the app fall under HIPAA protections versus ordinary consumer app data, and how to request deletion of your account and records. Ask support in writing if the policy leaves any of those unclear.
Legitimacy, certification and the public record
The direct answer to the legitimacy question: this is a real telemedicine service using licensed clinicians, with a published cash price and LegitScript certification, which is the standard third-party check that a telehealth or pharmacy operation meets applicable licensing and compliance requirements. You can confirm any provider’s status through the LegitScript certification lookup.
Certification is a compliance signal, not a quality rating. It says the operation clears legal and licensing checks. It says nothing about how quickly support answers or how clearly the app reports a prescription status.
No regulatory action against the company appears in the attributable public record, and no FDA warning letter is on file that we can point to. The complaints that do exist are operational: money taken, prescription unclear, support unreachable. Those are serious for the people affected, and they are a different category from a regulator finding unsafe prescribing. We keep the two separate, and our scoring methodology explains how each type of evidence is weighted.
Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere
Any honest QuickMD review has to hold two things at once: fast, low-friction access to buprenorphine treatment is genuinely valuable, and the service around that access is inconsistent.
It works best for someone who needs a buprenorphine prescription quickly, has no coverage or does not want to use it, already has counseling or a support group in place, and is comfortable chasing a pharmacy when something stalls. It also works for occasional minor urgent care, where one flat fee beats an urgent care copay and a waiting room.
Look elsewhere if you want counseling bundled with medication, if you want your insurance to carry the cost, if you need reliable monthly contact with the same clinician, or if you want a platform that proactively manages refills. Complex chronic conditions and anything needing a physical examination are also poor fits. Our telehealth provider directory is the quickest way to see services built around bundled care instead of single visits.
Questions to ask before you pay
Questions to Ask Before You Pay
- Confirm the exact visit fee and what it includes
- Ask if a follow-up is included and how long you have to use it
- Get the refund policy in writing before your card is charged
- Ask which pharmacies can receive the prescription in your state
- Confirm whether labs are required and who arranges them
- Ask expected support response time
- What is the fee for the exact visit type I need, and what does it include beyond the consult?
- Is a follow-up included, and if so, how long do I have to use it?
- What is the refund policy if no prescription is issued, or if the prescription never reaches my pharmacy?
- Which pharmacies can receive the prescription in my state?
- How do I reach support, and what response time should I expect?
- Are labs required for this treatment, and who arranges them?
If you are switching from another provider, ask your current one for a copy of your records, confirm the date of your last covered refill, and check whether cancelling ends access to your prescription history. Then price both routes side by side using our cost calculators, and see what an itemised comparison looks like in our sample savings report.
Reputation check
Public sentiment splits cleanly between the clinical encounter and the operations around it. The app is listed on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, both describing video visits with US-licensed, board-certified clinicians across addiction treatment, weight loss and urgent care.
On the critical side, a widely read r/telehealth thread collects consistent complaints about charges made without a prescription arriving, no visibility into prescription status, and difficulty getting a substantive response from customer service. A Trustpilot profile for the service carries a more favourable strand, with reviewers describing it as a convenient way to get minor problems handled without an emergency room trip.
Independent editorial coverage has generally framed the service as a straightforward cash-pay route to addiction treatment, weighing fast access against the absence of insurance billing and bundled counseling. Community reviews on our own pages are moderated rather than verified, and they are kept separate from the public sources above so you can weigh each on its own terms.
Educational content, not medical advice. Always consult a qualified clinician before starting, stopping or switching treatment.