How we check a clinic
Official registers, the clinic's own website and its public reviews. Nothing from the clinic's sales team.
IllustrationWhat we check, and where
These are the six questions we look into for a clinic, and where we look. For each one we write down what we found, where we found it, and the date we checked. Each clinic page shows what we have checked so far for that clinic.
| Question | Where we look |
|---|---|
| Is the clinic properly registered? | The official register of healthcare providers for its country, for example Poland's RPWDL, Lithuania's licence register (VASPVT) and Turkey's Ministry of Health list of hospitals authorised for international patients. Also the company register, to see who owns it. |
| Who would operate on me? | The surgeons and dentists the clinic names on its own website, checked against the country's register of doctors where one can be searched. Turkey has no public register of doctors; we say so when it applies. |
| Are its accreditations real? | Each accreditation the clinic claims (for example JCI or FIFA), checked against the accrediting body's own published list. |
| What do patients say? | Every Google review of the clinic's hospital and its outpatient centre where they are listed separately: star ratings, how many were written in the last year, who writes them, and what people praise and complain about. |
| What will it cost? | The clinic's own published prices, saved on the day we read them, against our researched price ranges for that country and for UK private hospitals. |
| How does it compare? | The same measures for similar clinics, collected on the same day. |
How we read reviews
We read every review that has text. Reviews in other languages come to us translated by Google; we note the original language. We count subjects (for example nurses, waiting times, prices) with a fixed list of words rather than an AI summary, so every count can be checked by hand. We remove the names of staff and patients from any quote.
Our rules
- Patients never pay us. No clinic can pay to change what we say about it, or to be listed.
- Every fact has a source and a date. If we couldn't confirm something, we say so.
- We never score or rate a clinic. A clinic not found on a register under its brand name may be registered under a company name; "not found" means not found, not unsafe.
- Not medical advice. We don't judge clinical quality, read scans or recommend treatment.
To search the registers yourself: how to check a clinic or surgeon abroad is registered, country by country.
What we can't tell you
Public records don't show a surgeon's personal results or a clinic's complication rates, and no register can tell you whether an operation will go well. What we can give you is the facts on record and the questions to ask, in writing, before you pay anything you can't get back.