Skip to the reading The care handbook Physician-led peptide therapy Read at your own pace. Keep a question in the margin. What is it? Who leads care? What happens? What will I pay? What could go wrong? How do I decide? Follow the medicine Find the pharmacy behind the parcel A service name and the name preparing your medicine may be different. Find the person behind the word physician Read the board’s record for your doctor Find the pharmacy behind the parcel Get the actual name Ask which pharmacy is responsible for preparing and sending this medicine. Which pharmacy name will appear on the label? How can I ask its pharmacist about the product? FDA notes that people using online services may not know who mixed or made their medicine to order. An online care service’s name on a package does not prove it made the medicine. As checked September 26, 2026, FDA has challenged claims that misled people about who made it. Check the name in the right record Use your state pharmacy board’s search to look up the pharmacy name. Read the status and any limits attached to that entry. If the name does not match, ask the pharmacy and board to explain it. FDA provides a state-by-state route to pharmacy licence searches. For most states, shipping medicine across the state border requires a licence or permit in the receiving state, as checked September 26, 2026. Finding a licence does not guarantee that every medicine the pharmacy supplies is right for the patient. A note to keep Keep the lookup result beside the written medicine details so you can check for a mismatch. Read badges for what they establish PCAB is a voluntary quality check for pharmacies that mix or make medicines to order, called compounding. An outside organisation called ACHC runs the check. Its approval, called accreditation, means the pharmacy’s preparation methods were checked against quality standards; it does not mean every batch was tested. This outside quality check is separate from the state licence a pharmacy needs. Another type of maker, called an outsourcing facility, registers with FDA to make batches of sterile medicine, free from living germs. Registration alone does not give those medicines FDA approval, as of September 26, 2026. Carry this thought Get the pharmacy name, verify its record and ask how to reach a pharmacist. Pause when the offer avoids the hard questions Read the source that answers your question This is a reading guide for patients; it offers neither clinical care nor medicines. Chapter map Further reading Your notebook Read as text