What we mean by outcomes transparency
Under the Outcomes pillar of our v3.0 rubric, we evaluate three things: published cohort outcomes (mean weight loss, mean HbA1c reduction where applicable, over a defined window), transparent adverse-event reporting (which AEs occurred at what rate, how the program responded), and documented discontinuation rates (what fraction of patients stop therapy, on what timeline, and why).
Almost no telehealth program publishes any of this. The category is worth twenty points. Most providers score in the 11–17 range, almost entirely on inference from clinical-protocol quality rather than from published data.
Why nobody publishes
The straightforward explanation is competitive: published cohort outcomes are a benchmark a competitor can use, and a number a future customer can compare against. The provider with mediocre outcomes data has a strong incentive not to publish; the provider with strong outcomes data has a weaker incentive to publish if their competitors won't.
But there is also a softer explanation: most telehealth programs do not systematically collect the data they would need to publish. Lab integration is variable, follow-up cadence is uneven, and the operational infrastructure to track 12-, 26-, and 52-week endpoints across a patient cohort is non-trivial. The decision to publish is in many cases a decision to first build the measurement system.
What good would look like
We would consider a program transparency-compliant on outcomes if it published, at minimum: mean percentage weight loss in a defined patient cohort at 26 and 52 weeks, with a documented denominator and an explicit handling of dropouts; rates of the five most common adverse events with a documented protocol for response; and a discontinuation curve over the first year of therapy.
That is the minimum disclosure that lets a prospective patient compare apples to apples across programs. It is also, as of 2026, basically nonexistent in the cash-pay telehealth segment. The pillar's existence in our rubric is meant to make this absence visible.