Telehealth growth rate: what the data shows for GLP-1

The US telehealth growth rate depends on what is measured. Medicare use is off its 2020 peak but nearly double pre-pandemic levels. FAIR Health’s commercial claims show telehealth at 5.51% of claim lines in Q1 2026. Hims & Hers, which sells GLP-1 weight-loss programs, grew US revenue 16% in Q2 2026. Forecasts run from 11.5% to about 32% a year.

This page ties those numbers to customer acquisition for GLP-1 telehealth brands. It separates measured usage (FAIR Health, CMS, CDC), modeled market forecasts and company filings, then uses Hims & Hers and LifeMD as the weight-loss worked example. Figures were checked on November 2, 2026.

Telehealth growth rate by dataset

A telehealth growth rate comes from one of six kinds of source, and each counts something different. The figure only means something next to its definition.

FAIR Health states that its tracker covers the commercially insured population and excludes Medicare Fee-for-Service, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. Our inference: cash-pay direct-to-consumer GLP-1 brands send few claims to a tracker like this, so their growth shows up mainly in company filings. In the same Q1 2026 tracker, FAIR Health ranks overweight and obesity third nationally among telehealth diagnostic categories, with mental health conditions first.

Why published telehealth forecasts disagree

Published telehealth forecasts disagree because each firm defines the market differently and starts from a different base year. Four global figures published between March and September 2026 show the spread.

The 2025 base values run from $77.4B to $226.63B, a spread of about 2.9 times. Towards Healthcare’s US-only page puts the US market at $52.77B in 2025 and forecasts $447.69B by 2035, a 23.84% CAGR. These are modeled numbers from the named firms. This page does not average them and does not adopt any of them.

Scope explains part of the gap. Grand View splits the market into hardware, software and services. The Business Research Company counts live videoconferencing, store-and-forward, remote patient monitoring and mobile health, including related goods sold with the service. MarketsandMarkets reports telehealth and telemedicine together and defines telemedicine as the clinical-services part of telehealth. None of the public summaries we read gives a separate figure for weight-loss or GLP-1 telehealth.

A CAGR is the yearly rate that connects two endpoints: (ending value / starting value) ^ (1 / years) - 1. The published rates reproduce from the published endpoints.

The DelveInsight release does not reproduce as cleanly. It states about 32% and labels the period 2025 to 2032, while listing a 2034 end value. The two endpoints it lists, about $210B and about $2,458B, imply about 31% over nine years.

US telehealth usage after the pandemic peak

Measured US telehealth use fell from its 2020 and 2021 peaks and remains above pre-pandemic levels in Medicare, while the commercial claims tracker shows an uptick in early 2026. The measured series, with dates:

• Medicare, traditional. 6.9% of eligible beneficiaries used telehealth in Q1 2020 and 46.7% in Q2 2020. By Q2 2025 the share was 12.5%. KFF writes that use “remains nearly two times higher than it was pre-pandemic.” “Eligible” means enrolled in Part B and having received at least one service on the CMS telehealth list, in person or by telehealth.
• US adults, self-reported. The share of adults using telemedicine in the past 12 months fell from 37.0% in 2021 to 30.1% in 2022. Phone appointments count. The adult figures here end at 2022, the latest year in the NCHS report cited.
• Office-based physicians. 80.0% of office-based physicians said their practice used telemedicine in 2024, against 86.5% in 2021, according to NCHS.
• Commercial claims. FAIR Health reports telehealth at 5.51% of medical claim lines in Q1 2026, up from 5.01% in Q4 2025. The share of patients with a telehealth claim rose from 17.3% to 18.4%. FAIR Health launched this quarterly tracker as the successor to its monthly one, and the release gives one quarter-to-quarter change, not a multi-year trend.

Each series measures a different population and a different thing, so the changes cannot be added together or compared point for point.

GLP-1 telehealth growth in company filings: Hims & Hers and LifeMD

Public filings show GLP-1 weight-loss telehealth brands growing at different rates, so no single growth rate describes the segment. Neither release breaks out GLP-1 revenue as its own line, and both companies sell other products.

The Hims & Hers 38% includes international revenue. US revenue grew 16% to $621.8M, and revenue outside the US rose from $7.5M to $131.4M, which the CFO attributed in part to the Eucalyptus acquisition closing in June. For the first half of 2026, US revenue was $1,151.7M against $1,116.0M, up 3%. By subtraction, Q1 2026 US revenue was about $529.9M against $578.7M a year earlier, a decline of about 8%. The 16% in Q2 is therefore a re-acceleration after a weaker quarter, not a steady rate. For the compounded and branded split, see the compounded GLP-1 explainer.

What telehealth growth means for GLP-1 customer acquisition

Acquisition spend moved in different directions against revenue at the two companies, so market growth alone does not predict what a brand pays to win customers. The filings give these marketing lines for Q2 2026.

The share-of-revenue column is our arithmetic from each company’s own figures: marketing expense divided by total revenue. It is not a cost per customer, and the two expense lines are defined differently. Hims & Hers revenue and marketing are both consolidated, so they include international activity. LifeMD’s selling and marketing spend fell $1.8M from Q1 2026, which the company called a planned step-down, and its release attributes part of its adjusted EBITDA loss to elevated customer acquisition costs earlier in the quarter.

Our reading of the filings:

• Public-company marketing budgets at this scale are the backdrop for any smaller brand buying US traffic for weight-loss telehealth.
• Revenue growth and acquisition efficiency are separate measures. LifeMD’s revenue fell while its selling and marketing expense rose.
• Subscription revenue means acquisition spend buys a stream of refills, which is why per-customer math matters more than market CAGR. The patient acquisition cost guide covers that math, and the telehealth business model guide covers the revenue side.

Brands working out how to acquire customers against budgets like these can talk to the GLP1.partners team.

Constraints that change telehealth growth numbers

Three constraints change how a telehealth growth number should be read: Medicare policy dates, which payers a dataset covers, and product-mix changes at the brand level.

• Medicare policy dates. KFF reports that Medicare coverage of many telehealth services lapsed during the government shutdown that began October 1, 2025, and was retroactively reinstated on November 12. Many flexibilities now run through December 31, 2027 under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026. These dates affect Medicare billing data. The sources checked do not tie them to cash-pay direct-to-consumer brands, so this page draws no link.
• Payer coverage. FAIR Health covers commercial claims, and CMS data covers traditional Medicare. No tracker cited here covers cash-pay telehealth.
• Product mix. Hims & Hers reshaped its US weight-loss offering in Q1 2026, and LifeMD reports roughly 95% of new weight management patients starting on branded GLP-1. A year-over-year revenue comparison across that change compares two different offerings.

How to read a telehealth growth number before setting a budget

Five checks turn a published growth figure into something a budget can use.

1. Check the scope. Find out whether the figure counts telehealth or telemedicine, and whether hardware, software and services are all included.
2. Check the base year and recompute the rate. Take the start and end values and apply the CAGR formula above. A rate that does not reproduce from its own endpoints needs an explanation before it goes in a plan.
3. Check the geography. Global and US figures are not interchangeable. North America’s 2025 share of the global market is 45.2% in Grand View’s report and 43.03% in DelveInsight’s release.
4. Check who is in the data. Ask which payers are counted and whether cash-pay customers appear at all.
5. Check the date and the type of change. Separate actuals from forecasts, and separate quarter-over-quarter from year-over-year. FAIR Health’s 10.1% compares two consecutive quarters, while Hims & Hers’ 16% compares Q2 2026 with Q2 2025.

After those checks, the planning inputs for a brand come from its own channel data. The GLP-1 marketing strategy guide and the guide to scaling a GLP-1 telehealth brand pick up from there.