How Does My Practice Compete With Hims, Ro and Online Telehealth Brands?

Let us name the thing that worries you, because pretending it is small helps nobody. Direct to consumer telehealth has gotten huge. Hims and Hers reported more than 2.5 million active subscribers and revenue up 49 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2025, according to its own earnings and coverage compiled by DrugPatentWatch. Ro has been privately valued at around 7 billion dollars. The broader US telehealth market sat near 197 billion dollars in 2025, per Precedence Research. These are not tiny startups. They run national ads, and some of them are aimed at the exact patients you want.

So the concern is fair. But before you assume the app always wins, look at where it is strong and where it is weak. Once you see the pattern, the way to compete gets obvious.

What the online brands are actually good at

Be honest about this part, because you cannot beat something you refuse to understand. The online brands did not win on better medicine. They won on two things: convenience and privacy.

Convenience means a patient can start in two minutes, from the couch, at 11pm, with no phone call, no parking, no waiting room, and no taking a morning off work. Privacy means they can ask about erectile dysfunction, weight, hair loss, birth control, or anxiety without saying it out loud to a receptionist or a neighbor in the lobby. For a whole set of needs, those two things matter more to the patient than almost anything else.

Notice what is missing from that list: a real exam, a doctor who knows their history, continuity over years, and a human who actually cares how they are doing. The online brands traded those away for speed. That trade is their weakness, and it is your opening.

What patients still want that an app cannot give

Here is the number that should change how you feel. When patients are asked about care in general, most still prefer to be seen in person. In post pandemic surveys, about 64 percent of patients said they would rather have future visits in person than by video, as reported by HealthLeaders. People did not fall out of love with their doctor. They fell in love with not having to jump through hoops to reach one.

Patients want a doctor who examines them, remembers their history, catches the thing a quick online intake form would miss, and is part of their actual community. An app cannot put a hand on a sore shoulder, notice the mole that needs a closer look, or sit with someone after hard news. That is real medicine, and it is the part you already do better than any national brand ever will. The trouble is that none of it matters if the patient never starts, because starting with you felt harder than tapping an ad.

A quick story from the trenches

A men's health and primary care practice called us last spring, frustrated. The doctor kept hearing the same thing from patients he ran into around town: they had started a weight or testosterone program through an online brand instead of coming in. He was a great doctor with twenty years in that community, and he was losing people to an app. So we did the simple test. We pulled out a phone and tried to book a new patient visit on his website. There was no booking button. The only path was a phone number that rolled to voicemail after five. The app his patients chose let them start in under two minutes. His own practice, the one with the actual relationship, made them call during business hours and wait. We did not change his medicine. We made starting with him as easy as starting with the app, and the leak started to close.

Five ways a local practice beats the online brands

You win by giving patients the convenience the apps trained them to expect, plus the real relationship the apps can never offer. Here is where to put your time and money, roughly in order.

Make starting with you as easy as tapping an ad

Every advantage you have over the apps is wasted if the patient never gets in the door. The relationship, the exam, the years of trust, none of it helps a stranger comparing options on their phone at midnight. The whole game is removing the friction between curiosity and a booked appointment.

That starts with your website, because a slow or confusing site sends people straight back to the app that felt effortless. We broke down what a converting site needs in what your practice website actually needs, and why speed alone can cost you patients in is your website too slow. Then booking has to be one tap, and responses have to be instant. Patients pick the option that answers first, which we measured in how fast you should respond to a new patient inquiry.

Speed is where a small practice can actually out app the app. Patients reach national brands fast, but they also stay a faceless account number. If a new patient can reach a real, helpful answer at your office in seconds, book on the spot, and feel like a person, you offer what they wanted from the app plus the human they secretly wished it had. That is why we connect practices to our AI receptionist, so every call, text, and web message gets answered and booked around the clock without burning out your front desk. And for the sensitive visits that drive people online in the first place, we covered the discreet, online first path men want in how to market a cash based practice.

How EtherealMinds helps you win those patients back

We work only with healthcare practices in the United States, and we hear this fear a lot now: a national app is pulling away the exact patients a practice should own. The fix is rarely to copy the app. It is to give patients the convenience that made the app attractive while keeping the real relationship the app can never deliver. That is the whole idea behind our patient acquisition system: a fast website with one tap booking, local SEO and reviews so you win the search instead of the brand, social media that makes you a familiar face, small local ads, and an AI receptionist answering every patient instantly, all wired together so starting with you is as easy as starting with them.

The national brands have the budget and the slick app. You have the one thing they keep trying and failing to fake: a real doctor, in their town, who will actually know them. Most patients are telling researchers every year that this is what they want. Give them that, and make it just as easy to begin, and the local practice does not just survive the telehealth wave. It wins the patients the apps were never built to keep.