r/telehealth: rules, karma requirements and posting culture
A small, unruled board where patients ask which online clinics are legit, vent about billing and missed prescriptions, and a few operators ask business questions.
Telehealth: how technology can revolutionize the ailing healthcare industry · Open on Reddit
- Members
- 7.2k
- Created
- 2013
- New posts a day
- 3.8
- Comments on a typical post
- 2
- New posts removed
- 27%
The short answer
r/telehealth publishes no karma or account age requirement. It has no written rules, no sidebar text and no post flair that we could find. That does not mean everything gets through: about 27% of posts in our sample were removed by Reddit's own filters, and we saw no moderator removals at all. The posts that stay are short text posts from patients asking where to get a prescription or warning others about a bad experience, and most get only a couple of replies.
Who posts here
Most posts come from patients with no medical or industry background asking plain questions: which service will prescribe this, does the chat box reach the doctor, is this site legit. Replies are practical and patient. Nothing is pitched too low for the room, though a basic question may simply get one answer or none.
- Patients looking for an online provider for a specific prescription, often without insurance or after losing coverage.
- People shopping for weight loss medication online and comparing prices, shipping and pharmacies.
- Unhappy customers of online clinics posting about charges, refunds and prescriptions that never arrived.
- Founders trying to launch a telehealth brand, asking about platforms, certification and who owns the patient data.
- Companies and affiliates posting their own service.
Karma and account requirements
What it takes to get a post through in r/telehealth.
| Karma | Not stated publicly. There are no rules or AutoModerator messages to go on. About 27% of posts in our sample were removed by Reddit's filters. |
|---|---|
| Account age | Not stated publicly. |
| Post flair | None. No post in our sample carried a flair. |
| Post type | Text, link, image, video and poll posts are all open. About 84% of posts are text and about 12% are links. |
What you can post
| Post type | Subreddit setting | Share of recent posts |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Allowed | 84% |
| Link | Allowed | 12% |
| Image | Allowed | 4% |
| Video | Allowed | <1% |
| Poll | Allowed | 0% |
What happens to a new post
Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.
- Stayed up71%
- Removed by Reddit's filters27%
- Deleted by the author2%
Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.
The culture
r/telehealth has about 7,000 members and under four posts a day. The description talks about technology changing healthcare, but the feed is mostly a consumer help board. People ask which online service will prescribe a given medication in their state or country, how long shipping took, and whether a site they just paid is real.
Complaint posts are the other staple. Several threads in the sample are about the same few online clinics: charges with no appointment, providers who showed up late, prescriptions never sent to the pharmacy, refunds refused. These pull the most replies, with other customers adding their own stories and advice on chargebacks. Compounded weight loss medication is the busiest single topic.
A smaller group posts from the business side: people launching a brand and comparing white-label platforms, asking about advertising certification, or discussing video visit no-shows. Those posts sit at the top of a very low scoring board. The best post in the sample has a score of 7, and the median thread gets two comments.
What lands
- A specific warning about a bad experience with a named service, with what was charged and what went wrong.
- A narrow request: the medication, the state or country, insurance or none, and what you have already tried.
- Pricing and logistics questions about online weight loss prescriptions, like whether the price rises with the dose.
- Operator questions asked casually and honestly, such as how certification works or who owns the data on a platform.
What gets removed or ignored
- We saw no moderator removals in the sample. Everything that went missing was taken by Reddit's own filters, about 27% of posts.
- Our data does not show why those posts were filtered, so we cannot say which kinds of post are most at risk.
- There are no written rules or AutoModerator messages listing banned content.
The unwritten rules
- Expect little engagement. A good post here gets a handful of upvotes and a few replies.
- Comments that recommend one particular service by name show up in many threads and read like marketing. Readers push back on services they consider scams, so a planted recommendation is a risk.
- People asking for controlled medication get practical answers, and now and then a blunt one.
- Write short. The median post is about 90 words and the median title is six words.
Self-promotion
There is no rule on self-promotion because there are no written rules at all. In practice promotional posts do stay up: a launch announcement for a consult app, a supplier's sales image and a link to a provider's homepage were all still live in the sample. They got almost no votes or replies. One post that disclosed the poster's employer up front also stayed. Being allowed is not the same as working, and with about 27% of posts removed by Reddit's filters, a new account posting a link is taking a chance.
How people write here
- Typical post length
- 92 words
- Typical title length
- 6 words
- Titles phrased as a question
- 33%
- Typical comment length
- 29 words
- Comments that include a link
- 5%
When people post
- 0:00 UTC, 17
- 1:00 UTC, 17
- 2:00 UTC, 25
- 3:00 UTC, 19
- 4:00 UTC, 18
- 5:00 UTC, 9
- 6:00 UTC, 14
- 7:00 UTC, 15
- 8:00 UTC, 10
- 9:00 UTC, 7
- 10:00 UTC, 12
- 11:00 UTC, 10
- 12:00 UTC, 23
- 13:00 UTC, 17
- 14:00 UTC, 21
- 15:00 UTC, 22
- 16:00 UTC, 18
- 17:00 UTC, 17
- 18:00 UTC, 19
- 19:00 UTC, 21
- 20:00 UTC, 21
- 21:00 UTC, 24
- 22:00 UTC, 6
- 23:00 UTC, 18
New posts by hour of day, UTC.
The regulars
The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.
Most active posters
- u/Smart_Shopper42174 posts
- u/Some-Difficulty-10163 posts
- u/Silvaer8313 posts
- u/Own_Transition61063 posts
- u/Crafty_Medicine5263 posts
Most active commenters
- u/HelixVM_Official6 comments
- u/TheIntakeStrategist5 comments
- u/VentyRanty4 comments
- u/late_night_deploys4 comments
- u/AnnualPangolin3154 comments
Top keywords
The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/telehealth.
- telehealth 103 posts
- prescription 47 posts
- doctor 59 posts
- appointment 49 posts
- medvidi 21 posts
- pharmacy 34 posts
- medication 46 posts
- prescribe 22 posts
- health 53 posts
- patients 29 posts
- prescriptions 19 posts
- provider 37 posts
- care 49 posts
- meds 28 posts
- medical 37 posts
- insurance 49 posts
- online 51 posts
- telehealth services 10 posts
- telehealth service 10 posts
- telehealth providers 10 posts
- pcp 14 posts
- quickmd 9 posts
- refill 14 posts
- prescribed 19 posts
- doctors 19 posts
- visit 22 posts
- patient 20 posts
- providers 22 posts
- clinic 17 posts
- telehealth company 7 posts
- telemedicine 9 posts
- experience 52 posts
- virtual 18 posts
- doc 15 posts
- healthcare 21 posts
- refills 9 posts
- treatment 18 posts
- service 32 posts
- appointments 14 posts
- services 27 posts
Recurring topics: telehealth, online, experience, doctor, medvidi, clinic, doctors, service, quickmd, prescription.
Growth
- 2020480
- 2022920
- 20231.4k
- 20242.2k
- 20254.3k
- 20267.2k
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Common questions
How much karma do you need to post in r/telehealth?
No requirement is published. The subreddit has no written rules, no sidebar text and no AutoModerator messages in our sample. Even so, about 27% of sampled posts were removed by Reddit's own filters, so a post from any account is not guaranteed to appear.
Can I promote my telehealth service in r/telehealth?
Nothing written forbids it, and promotional posts were still up in our sample. They drew close to no votes or comments. The posts that get replies are patient questions and warnings about bad experiences, so a plain announcement is unlikely to reach anyone.
What do people post about in r/telehealth?
Mostly patient questions: where to get a prescription online, what a service costs, how long delivery takes, and whether a provider is legitimate. Complaints about billing and missed prescriptions are common. A smaller set of posts comes from people building telehealth businesses.
Is r/telehealth active?
Modestly. It has about 7,000 members and under four posts a day, and the median post gets two comments. Complaint threads about specific online clinics are the ones that gather the most replies.
Data as of October 4, 2026. Numbers come from public Reddit data (the Arctic Shift archive and GummySearch) sampled on this date. Removal share counts posts taken down by moderators, AutoModerator or Reddit's own filters. Banner and icon belong to the community. Moderators change rules without notice, so treat the sidebar as the final word.
