I’m Opening a TRT Clinic

I’m starting a TRT clinic in my town, a little late to the party but all the local providers are doing nothing to connect with our community and drive new business so I see an opportunity. TRT has also changed my life for the positive and I want to spread that impact to others.

I need to scale it quickly (need at least 75 new prospects in the door each month) and although marketing is within my wheelhouse, I’d love any suggestions for tactics on how to get people in the door.

We will be offering free 15-min T-level checks as an incentive to book an appointment. I can run the test in an onsite lab and pre-qualify men for treatment (men’s only clinic). I live in a very affluent area that doesn’t currently have a TRT place that’s connected into the community (and we have a very close knit community too).

We open in January and I’m super excited. Now tell me why it will fail, and any suggestions for success you might have :grimacing:

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Are you an MD/DO or PA? Are you partnering with one or many? Most of the big clinics have a staff of MD/PAs.

Yes, will have 2 NPs both working part time to cover the hours, and am aligning with a MD/DO to act as Medical Director in a delegated authority capacity.

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This is nice, but ideally you want multiple tests, and more than just TT, to diagnose hypogonadism right? Or is this gonna be one of those single T only test is all you need to get whatever AAS you want?

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The NPs will have to work under him correct for that to be legit? I think there is a huge market for this and if you know your area it sounds like a good idea. Just don’t turn into the T-mill type of clinic. As @swoops39 mentioned you need to test for far more than TT. TT, FT, E2, SHBG, LH, FSH would be the bare minimum IMO.

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Yes, apologies @blshaw & @swoops39 as I’m realizing I’m not giving enough detail for decent discussion.

My plan is to have people come in for the 15-min test, and then use this to pre-qualify and get them signed up for weekly shots. Once they’re signed up, we then set a 2nd appointment for a second blood draw and that blood draw we would do both in-house T, plus in-house PSA, and send off for a comprehensive lab panel. Making sure we schedule new consults before 10am only is annoying, but I really want to be able to process insurance claims (after accreditation is complete) and I feel it would be a disservice if we onboard people as cash pay only in the first 2-3 months and then don’t have a way of retro-ing them into Insurance based on the methodology we used to initially qualify them for service.

This approach will be compliant with insurance provider requirements of two tests on different days (provided both blood draws happen before 10am), and will give enough detail to start treatment in a contientious manner.

The NPs will be nested under the MD, though i’ll be paying them through my LLC. I believe I can pay them directly vs. having to route the payments through the PLLC, but if needs to route to & back from PLLC, that’s also no big deal. Getting legal docs worked up atm, so if that’s needed, it will will become clear from the MSA agreement structure.

We are planning on offering multiple services, but with focus on TRT. Services include Weight Management, Vitamin Wellness, and Sexual Health (all focused on providing for Men exclusively). I am also planning on adding some aesthetic options like Botox, maybe Microneedling too down the line once I have a decent client base too, as there seems to be a market for it locally for men in a specific place that is male only focused.

I am planning to offer Deca Nandralone and possibly some Peptides too (I know another provider in my area prescribes Deca so I feel comfortable to do so). I’m pretty much in the dark as far as Peptides go and need to do a bit of research. From day 1, I will not be stocking supplements, but I may add various supplements too down the line. From others I have heard (anecdotally) that anything OTC people will just buy online from amazon or elsewhere and its not worth carrying the stock just to carry them on-site.

If there are any additional services or prescriptible products that you think may resonate or be suitable for including, I’d love to know your thoughts!

Oh, I am also planning on having an InBody scanner on-site for people to use whenever they want to check bodyfat and track progress against health goals.

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Yeah, but different insurance companies have a different max TT level before they will approve coverage. It’s probably going to be in the 150-250ng range for TT, and they won’t care about FT. You’re going to limit yourself greatly if you try to do this via insurance.

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Are you in TX?

Yes, am in TX

I know that BCBS is 11am cutoff and 400 total T level max and United Healthcare is 10am cutoff and 300 total T level max. Not sure about the rest of the market, but I’m planning on calling around to research if I can’t find out any other way before we start up. Insurance is a tricky part, most will end up being cash pay or rejected by insurance but if we know the values we can guide them easily enough to not get rejected by the insurers on claims

I can only tell you why I left the TRT clinic I started out with. In a nutshell, they only offered on-site injections. No T to go for self injections. I had to make a 90 mile round trip to get a weekly fix, and that fix was not a complete fix. I found that I need smaller and more frequent injections to keep stable T levels all week long. I always crashed before the next injection, even going as high as 140 mg per injection which was as high as they would go. That was over 11 years ago.

After about 6 months of this nonsense and an upcoming 3 week vacation to Europe with no prospects of getting T to go for the trip, I switched to a high end doc that specializes in TRT but did not take insurance. He prescribed an every 3 day injections schedule amounting to 93 mg/week (40 mg E3D). He showed me who to self-inject using an insulin syringe. He also prescribed HCG to prevent testicular atrophy.

I loved working with the doc and he offered SKYPE visits so I didn’t have to drive all the way to his clinic (200 mile round trip for the first visit). The problem was cost. After about 3 years, I convinced my PCP to take over medical management of my TRT to bring it all (except the HCG) within my insurance plan. I pay for the HCG out of pocket.

Insanity, the inconvenience is simply not worth the trouble! They charge you money to do the injections, it’s purely a financial model.

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Thanks for sharing this. I am going to be offering shots onsite, pellet, and at home injections. I think most people will end up doing first 3 months onsite and then opting for at home, which is fine. All check-ups and bloodwork will be taken onsite, to keep the connection with the Providers solid and to address any issues. I am going to try for insurance but not making it a primary goal at this point as, since others have stated, it’s very restrictive in this space.

Have my pharma contacts set up, and am starting to get things ready for launch. Have my onsite lab certs, DEA certs, most treatment protocols ready, am still working on kitting out the space and have to hire a 3rd part time NP & also some MAs, but things are coming into focus nicely.

Website is Here, still needs some fine tuning but it’s reasonably serviceable at this point. I have pages ready for a couple more services but haven’t pushed them as I’m still finding product sources. If anyone knows any good 503a peptide compounding pharmacies please let me know, as I’ve not managed to find one that provides the full range of peptides we are looking to supply yet

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T-cyp is dirt cheep compared to most other prescribed meds that I take. I have no problem paying out of pocket. In fact, I did for several years because I told the pharmacy not to submit it because it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting authorization. Then after one of my annual checkups, my doc mistakenly sent the script to a different pharmacy and they submitted it without asking me. The insurance paid it with no questions asked.

Same story for the HCG, but a different outcome. The insurance paid for it for about a year then started rejecting it. I asked the pharmacy not to submit it anymore. It’s not that expensive and I’m not all that cost sensitive anyway. I just want my medications so I can continue to feel “normal”.

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Don’t want to flame you, but that website is pretty terrible and screams pedmill to me.

Could be a good idea to check out the language from defy and other top clinics and just copy to start.

You also may want to hire some SEO professionals to help you with appropriate tagging and schema.

Aside from that - very excited for you!

No worries on the feedback, i appreciate the recommend on Defy.

Dude, this is really cool! How’d you figure this all out yourself? Can you recommend resources for others of us who might want to open a clinic in a different place?

There is a franchise called Gameday Mens Health that’s doing what you’re doing but it comes with all the cons of a franchise, it’s crazy to see you figuring it all out on your own. Awesome job.

There is a clinic called Revibe Mens Health that has 10 ish locations and is not a franchise that does well, I’d model their offer and go from there.

Good luck!

I actually used some public info on Gameday and another franchise (True Test HRT) as a resource when figuring out requirements and building a financial model, then realized there wasn’t much of anything that the franchise was providing (plus all the restrictions you mentioned). I also find their model to be pretty reckless since they don’t require comprehensive labs for someone to get treatment with them, just internally run PSA & Testosterone checks.

I have some friends who own Med Spas which has been a great resource for questions and contacts along the way, I’ve got a background in entrepreneurship, project management, marketing, and a few other trades that have helped too. Finding people you can ask advice for that work in the industry is really important (especially before you start having to pay people to do work for you). I also sneakily asked staff at my current TRT place that I’ve been using the the last year questions when getting my treatments. There’s also obviously online resources you can use for stuff too, finding consent forms that can be retrofitted into your needs for example is relatively easy online. AI tools can help too for certain topics (an easy point of entry AI tool is Bing.com’s interface). The BIG moment on a project like this is when you sign the lease, that’s a point of no return for commercial, and doing as much preparation and due diligence before that decision point as possible is obviously important. You can also backload a lot of the larger sunk costs (equipment, staffing, licenses), behind the lease… and in some cases that is necessary as there are pre-requisites to ex: getting DEA certification. This means you can relatively cheaply do the exploration on a new business concept before committing. Amongst other stuff, I ran some test ads on social media to gauge interest in the concept and value proposition before committing to lease, ADs + focus group performed favorably and helped to reassure my decision.

I will say, medical is definitely not without its hurdles, and is more difficult, and expensive, to start up than many other industries (ex: starting a general retail store). The upside potential is great because of the higher margins, and the ability to make a positive impact in people’s lives, but it’s definitely a tough path to pick. My big pros are that I have a new, turnkey space that just requires decor, and I know my local market very well.

Here’s a few pictures from the clinic as it’s going through its build out. More furniture and clean up happening next two weeks before launch, I’ll share pics once we have official ones done etc.





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DIdn’t realize you were here. Stopped by to check it out.

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I sort of echo the thoughts on a mill view. I think this is a great service but to be totally honest I would have avoided this setup because it just seems like the places the radio plays. Use the Defy model and skip names like Alpha/bear pictures and such makes it seem sketchy to me and less like an actual medical service. Just giving you my honest thoughts.

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