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Glossary
The telehealth glossary.
54 terms that decide how telehealth businesses get built, in plain English: the legal structure, the clinical rules, the pharmacy chassis, the certification layer, and the payments machinery. Each definition links to the guide that goes deeper.
Business & legal structure
- MSO (management services organization)
- The non-clinical company in the standard telehealth structure: it owns the brand, technology, and operations, and provides them to a physician-owned practice under a management services agreement. It's how non-clinician founders and investors participate in healthcare without owning the medical practice itself.
- The MSO model, explained
- Friendly PC (professional corporation)
- The physician-owned professional entity that is the actual medical practice: it employs or contracts the clinicians, owns the patient relationships and records, and holds clinical authority. 'Friendly' refers to the cooperative relationship with the MSO, not to any reduction in the physician's legal responsibility.
- Corporate practice of medicine (CPOM)
- The state-law doctrine that only licensed clinicians or clinician-owned entities may own medical practices or direct clinical care. Enforcement varies widely by state; multi-state telehealth programs structure for the strictest states they serve.
- Management services agreement (MSA)
- The contract between the practice and the MSO defining the services provided and the fee. Fee design is the legally sensitive part: fair-market-value flat or cost-based fees are the conservative pattern where fee-splitting rules are strict.
- Fee splitting
- Sharing professional medical revenue with a non-clinician, restricted in many states. It's the doctrine that constrains how an MSO may charge a practice, and why percentage-of-revenue management fees draw scrutiny in strict states.
- Standing order
- A physician-signed order authorizing other staff to perform defined clinical actions under stated conditions without a case-by-case physician order. Common in med-spa and IV-therapy operations; must be lawful in each state where it's used, which certification reviewers ask about directly.
- Telehealth vs. telemedicine
- Often used interchangeably. Where distinguished, telemedicine means remote clinical care (diagnosis, treatment, prescribing) while telehealth is the broader umbrella including remote monitoring, education, and administrative services. Regulators' definitions vary by statute, so read each rule's own definition.
- DTC (direct-to-consumer) healthcare
- Care marketed and sold directly to patients, typically cash-pay and online, rather than reached through referrals or insurance networks. Modern lifestyle telehealth (weight loss, hormones, hair, skin) is predominantly DTC.
- Cash-pay model
- A practice that charges patients directly and doesn't bill insurance. It trades payer revenue for radically simpler operations (no credentialing with payers, no claims), transparent patient pricing, and product-like subscription economics; patients sometimes seek reimbursement themselves via superbills.
- Superbill
- An itemized receipt with the diagnosis and procedure codes a patient needs to seek reimbursement from their own insurer for care they paid cash for. It lets a cash-pay practice stay out of insurance networks while leaving patients a reimbursement path.
Clinical & prescribing
- Asynchronous telehealth
- Care delivered without a live interaction: the patient completes a structured medical intake, and a licensed clinician reviews it later and decides, including prescribing where appropriate. Permitted for many conditions in many states; others require synchronous contact for some or all encounters.
- State prescribing rules
- Synchronous telehealth
- Care delivered in a live interaction, by video or audio. Some states require a synchronous encounter to establish the patient-practitioner relationship or for particular drug classes, which is why national intake flows branch by state.
- Patient-practitioner relationship
- The legally required clinical relationship that must exist before prescribing. States differ on what establishes it via telehealth (asynchronous intake, video visit, or in-person exam), making this the single most consequential state-law variable in telehealth program design.
- Informed consent (telehealth)
- The patient's documented agreement to receive care via telehealth, covering the modality's nature and limits. Many states require telehealth-specific consent language and its retention in the record.
- Ryan Haight Act
- The federal law generally requiring an in-person evaluation before controlled substances are prescribed via the internet, subject to telemedicine exceptions. Pandemic-era flexibilities and ongoing DEA rulemaking have repeatedly changed the practical posture; programs touching controlled substances verify the current status before building.
- Collaborating physician
- A physician holding the state-required collaboration or supervision agreement with an NP (or PA) in non-independent-practice states, with duties such as chart-review percentages or regular meetings where rules specify them. A real operational role; paper-only versions are a known enforcement target.
- Building the clinician network
- Medical director
- The physician who owns a program's clinical governance: protocols, standing orders, quality review, and accountability to boards and reviewers. In the MSO structure this authority sits on the practice side.
- IMLC (Interstate Medical Licensure Compact)
- An agreement among most states streamlining the process for qualified physicians to obtain additional state licenses. It eases multi-state coverage building; it is not a single national license.
- Credentialing
- Verifying a clinician's qualifications from primary sources: licenses in each state, DEA registration, board certification, work history, and screening for board actions and exclusions, refreshed on a cycle. Certification, payers, and partnership diligence all ask for the file.
- eRx (electronic prescribing)
- Transmitting prescriptions electronically from prescriber to pharmacy over certified networks. Telehealth platforms integrate eRx-capable systems rather than building the rails; EPCS (electronic prescribing of controlled substances) adds identity-proofing and two-factor requirements for controlled medications.
- EHR (electronic health record)
- The system holding the legal medical record: encounters, orders, messages, and documents. Telehealth programs need async review queues and state-aware routing more than hospital-grade breadth, but the record must be real, retained per state rules, and producible on demand.
- Controlled substance schedules
- The federal I-V classification of drugs with abuse potential, with state overlays. Practically for lifestyle telehealth: most GLP-1, hair, and skin medications are non-controlled, while testosterone is Schedule III, so TRT programs inherit the entire controlled-substance telemedicine framework.
Pharmacy & compounding
- Compounding
- A licensed pharmacy preparing a customized medication (combining, altering, or formulating ingredients) for use where an FDA-approved product doesn't meet the need. Compounded preparations are not FDA-approved, which is what the required disclosures on selling surfaces say.
- 503A pharmacy
- A traditional compounding pharmacy: compounds pursuant to prescriptions for identified patients, regulated primarily by state boards under USP standards. The chassis behind ship-to-patient telehealth models, usually as a multi-state network routed by patient location.
- 503A vs 503B, explained
- 503B outsourcing facility
- An FDA-registered compounder operating under full cGMP that may produce batches without patient-specific prescriptions, including office stock for clinics. Created by the DQSA in 2013; bulk substances it compounds from must generally sit on the FDA's 503B bulks list.
- cGMP (current good manufacturing practice)
- The FDA's manufacturing quality framework covering facilities, processes, testing, and documentation. 503B facilities operate under it; traditional 503A pharmacies follow USP compounding standards instead, which is a core difference between the categories.
- USP <795> / <797>
- The United States Pharmacopeia chapters governing non-sterile (795) and sterile (797) compounding: environments, technique, testing, and dating. The quality language to use when diligencing a 503A partner.
- Beyond-use date (BUD)
- The date after which a compounded preparation should not be used, set under USP rules; the compounding world's analog to an expiration date, typically far shorter than manufactured-drug dating. It drives fulfillment cadence for compounded programs.
- Office stock
- Medication inventory held by a clinic or practice for on-site administration rather than dispensed to a named patient, lawfully sourced from 503B outsourcing facilities. The pattern behind med-spa and IV-therapy supply, and one certification reviewers ask applicants to document.
- Cold chain
- Temperature-controlled storage and shipping from pharmacy to patient, required for many injectables including GLP-1s. A fulfillment-diligence item: packaging validation, transit-time limits, and what happens when a shipment sits on a porch in July.
- Certificate of analysis (CoA)
- A document reporting the testing performed on a specific batch (identity, potency, sterility, endotoxins as applicable) and by whom. Serious compounding partners provide them; marketing claims about testing should trace to them.
- NABP
- The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, the association of state pharmacy regulators. Its accreditation programs verify pharmacies; payment networks accept NABP accreditation or LegitScript certification for pharmacy merchants, and telehealth applicants' fulfillment pharmacies are expected to hold one or the other.
- NABP vs. LegitScript
- GLP-1
- The drug class (glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, including semaglutide and tirzepatide) at the center of modern weight-loss telehealth. Post-shortage, compounded versions require documented patient-specific clinical need, and the marketing rules around them are among the strictest in the category.
- Compounded GLP-1 compliance
- Research use only (RUO)
- Labeling that a substance is for laboratory research, not human use. On a consumer-facing storefront it functions as a red flag, not a shield: certification and payments reviewers treat prominent RUO labeling with consumer checkout as evidence of unapproved-drug sales.
- The products that sink applications
- FDA Form 483
- The written observations FDA investigators issue after inspecting a facility. Not a penalty in itself, but certification applications expect 483s disclosed when observations required corrective action, and a partner pharmacy's 483 history plus responses is fair diligence material.
Certification & privacy
- LegitScript certification
- The healthcare merchant certification that payment networks and ad platforms use to verify telehealth and pharmacy businesses, covering nine published standards from licensure to website conduct. Applications run $975 per website (nonrefundable) plus $2,150 per year once certified, as of August 2026. LegitScript® is a registered trademark of LegitScript LLC; Embed Care isn't affiliated with them.
- The complete certification guide
- Preliminary certification
- LegitScript certification granted to a business whose website is still under construction, based on staging access and a completion timeline, publicly verifiable while conditions are pending. One nuance: the seal code issues once conditions are met, so a preliminarily certified business can be legitimately certified without displaying a seal yet.
- Adverse action disclosure
- The certification application's broad history question: lawsuits, warning letters, consent agreements, monetary penalties of $2,000 or more, card-network fines, and FDA 483s that required corrective action, across a multi-year lookback. Disclosed history is generally workable; discovered history usually is not.
- HIPAA
- The federal law governing protected health information held by covered entities and their business associates: privacy, security, and breach rules. A marketing site that collects no PHI sits mostly outside it, but the moment intake data flows, the framework (and its BAA requirement for vendors) applies.
- PHI (protected health information)
- Individually identifiable health information held by a HIPAA-covered entity or business associate. The operational line for telehealth marketers: identity plus health-condition interest, together, is the combination that turns routine analytics into a privacy event.
- BAA (business associate agreement)
- The HIPAA-required contract with any vendor that touches PHI on your behalf, obligating it to protect the data. Ad platforms won't sign them for pixel data, which is the structural reason trackers don't belong on care surfaces.
- HBNR (Health Breach Notification Rule)
- The FTC rule requiring non-HIPAA health apps and connected businesses to notify consumers when health data is disclosed without authorization, enforced since 2023 (GoodRx was the first action) and amended in 2024 to state its reach plainly. The FTC's main hook for pixel cases outside HIPAA.
- Pixels, HIPAA, and telehealth
- Tracking pixel
- A snippet that sends page and event data, with identifiers, from your site to an ad or analytics platform. Defensible on general marketing pages behind real consent; the enforcement record is about pixels on intake, checkout, and authenticated surfaces.
- Consent management
- The banner-plus-blocking machinery that keeps non-essential trackers unloaded until a visitor opts in, and records the choice. The blocking half is the point: a banner over an already-fired pixel documents the violation rather than preventing it.
Payments
- High-risk merchant
- A merchant category the card networks require acquirers to register and monitor specially, with fines for boarding illegal actors. Online pharmacy and telemedicine are high-integrity-risk categories, which is why mainstream processors' terms exclude them and certification became the entry ticket.
- Telehealth payment processing
- MCC (merchant category code)
- The four-digit code classifying a merchant's business for the card networks; 5122 (drugs and druggists' sundries) and 5912 (drug stores and pharmacies) trigger pharmacy registration requirements. Boarding under a different code to avoid that is misclassification, and a common cause of terminations.
- VIRP (Visa Integrity Risk Program)
- Visa's program requiring acquirers to register and monitor high-integrity-risk merchants, including pharmacy and telemedicine, with third-party verification (LegitScript certification or NABP accreditation for pharmacy types) as the standard evidence. Mastercard's BRAM program is the counterpart.
- MATCH list
- Mastercard's database of terminated merchants (Member Alert to Control High-risk Merchants), checked by acquirers during underwriting; a listing typically persists around five years and must be addressed honestly in later applications. The long tail of an account termination.
- MID (merchant identifier)
- The account ID under which a merchant processes cards. Multi-MID architecture spreads volume across several merchant accounts with healthcare-experienced acquirers so no single underwriter's decision can pause the business; it is redundancy, not a way to disguise what's being sold.
- Rolling reserve
- A percentage of each settlement the acquirer holds back for a period as a loss cushion, common in high-risk underwriting and often imposed suddenly when risk reviews sour. Cash-flow planning for telehealth should assume reserves are possible.
- Chargeback
- A cardholder's bank-initiated reversal of a charge. Networks monitor dispute ratios against thresholds, and sustained breaches endanger the account; telehealth defense is honest descriptors, findable cancellation, clinical-context response files, and refund policies that resolve anger before it becomes a dispute.
- Dunning
- The failed-payment recovery process: decline-code-aware retries, card-updater refreshes, and polite outreach for a new card. In subscription telehealth, most involuntary churn is a decline nobody followed up on, which makes dunning quietly one of the highest-ROI systems in the stack.
- Negative option billing
- Subscriptions that continue charging until canceled. FTC rules require clear pre-payment disclosure, express consent, and cancellation as easy as signup; subscription telehealth is squarely in scope, and the same mechanics reduce chargebacks anyway.
Definitions are operator orientation as of August 2026, not legal advice; regulatory details vary by state and change. LegitScript® is a registered trademark of LegitScript LLC; NABP is the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. Embed Care isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by either.