The 10-Point IV Therapy Checklist Before You Book (2026)

Canadian journalists and medical journals have spent years pointing out that IV lounges sit in a regulatory patchwork: practitioners are regulated, most premises are not inspected, and the evidence behind the menus is thin. What none of that coverage gave you is the practical follow-up: fine, so what do I actually check before I sit down in the chair?

This is that tool. Ten checks, in the order you can do them, most from your phone before you ever call the clinic. Print it, screenshot it, or just skim it in the waiting room. Every check exists because of something that has actually gone wrong in this industry. General information, not medical advice.

Before you book, from your phone

1. Look up who administers, and who prescribes. Two different people, usually, and both matter. The person inserting the line should be a regulated professional, and someone with prescribing authority, a physician, nurse practitioner, or authorized naturopathic doctor, should stand behind what is in the bag. Every provincial register is public and free, and our step-by-step lookup guide links each one. Two minutes, and you are ahead of nearly every customer they have ever had.

2. In Ontario, if it is a naturopath-run clinic, check the premises register too. Ontario publishes actual inspection outcomes for every location where an ND performs IV therapy. Search the clinic on the CONO IVIT premises register. Active with a pass is what you want to see. Not listed at all is a question to ask.

3. Rule yourself out first. Kidney disease, heart failure, pregnancy or breastfeeding, regular medications, or a planned high-dose vitamin C drip without knowing your G6PD status: each changes the calculation, and each is a doctor conversation before it is a booking. The full picture is in who should not get IV therapy.

4. Check the claims on their website. Regulators have acted against IV businesses mostly for one thing: claiming drips treat or cure diseases. A menu that promises to treat illness, reverse aging, or detoxify organs is telling you how the clinic calibrates truth. Compare what their menu claims with the drip-by-drip evidence verdicts.

5. Get the full price before you arrive. The session price, any assessment or consultation fee, and what happens if the vein takes multiple attempts or the appointment runs long. Complaint boards are full of surprise add-ons. While you are at it, compare the quote against real market rates in our price index.

When you call or arrive

6. Expect to be screened, and be suspicious if you are not. A serious clinic asks about your medical history, kidney and heart health, medications, supplements, allergies, and pregnancy status before anything is booked or hung. A menu and a card reader with no questions is the single clearest signal to walk.

7. Ask what is in the bag, by ingredient and dose. Not the drip's brand name, the contents. You are entitled to know exactly what is being infused before you consent to it, and a clinic that cannot or will not produce the list has answered a different question.

8. Ask where their injectables come from. The most serious documented harms in Canadian IV wellness were contaminated products supplied to clinics, which triggered a Health Canada recall across three provinces. Licensed pharmacy or accredited compounder with documentation is the answer you want. Hesitation is not.

9. Ask what happens if you react during the infusion. Who is on site, what emergency equipment and medications they keep, and what their protocol is. Reactions are rare; the point of the question is that a prepared clinic answers it instantly and an unprepared one improvises.

10. Read the payment terms before signing anything. Memberships that renew automatically, packages with no refund path, and cancellation fees are the single largest category of real-world complaints about this industry. If you cannot find how to cancel before you sign, you have found the answer.

How to score it

There is no pass mark, but there is a pattern. A good clinic clears most of these without friction, because the checks describe what a well-run medical service already does. Two or three hesitant answers are a conversation. A clinic that fails the screening check, the ingredients check, or the sourcing check has failed the ones that map onto actual documented harm, and no discount fixes that.

Clinics on TheDripMap that carry verification have had the register checks in items 1 and 2 done by us, with the date and source shown, and how that verification works is public. The rest of the checklist is still yours to run, and a clinic worth choosing will not mind that you did.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I check before getting an IV drip?

Three things from your phone: the provider's registration on your province's public register, the clinic's claims against the evidence, and the all-in price. Three things in person: that they screen your medical history before treating you, that they will list the bag's exact contents, and that they can say where their injectables are compounded and what their emergency protocol is.

What are the red flags at an IV therapy clinic?

No health screening before treatment, refusal to list ingredients and doses, claims that drips treat or cure diseases, vagueness about where injectables come from, surprise fees, and memberships with no visible cancellation path. Each of these corresponds to a category of documented real-world harm or complaint, which is what separates them from nitpicks.

How do I verify an IV clinic is legitimate in Canada?

Look up the people, not the storefront: the administering professional and the prescriber on their provincial college registers, which are public and free. In Ontario, naturopath-run IV clinics can also be checked on the College of Naturopaths' premises register, which publishes inspection outcomes. Our verification guide walks through every register with links.

Is it rude to ask a clinic these questions?

No, and the reaction is itself information. These are questions a well-run clinic answers routinely and without defensiveness, because they describe ordinary safe practice. A clinic that treats basic questions about credentials, contents and safety as an insult has told you what you needed to know at zero cost.

General information only, not medical advice. The checks above are consumer diligence, not a safety guarantee, and no checklist substitutes for clinical judgment about whether an infusion is appropriate for you. Last reviewed August 2026.