How to read a Chinese hospital

1. The grading system, decoded

Chinese hospitals are graded by health authorities on a scale with three tiers, each carrying sub-grades. Written out, a top-graded hospital is 三级甲等, tertiary, grade A, and in speech it is almost always shortened to 三甲.

Within each tier, grades run A, B, C (甲、乙、丙). So 三级甲等 is the top grade of the top tier. You will see it stated on hospital websites, on signage, and in almost every description written about a Chinese hospital, including by agencies, because it is the one credential everyone recognises.

2. National and regional centre designations

Separately from grading, China's health authorities designate certain hospitals as national or regional centres in particular fields, and designate national clinical key specialties at department level. These are more informative than the overall grade for one reason: they attach to a discipline rather than to a building.

• National medical centres and national regional medical centres, designated in specific fields, intended to concentrate difficult cases and set standards.
• National clinical key specialties, awarded at department level, which is the level at which you are actually treated.

If you are comparing two hospitals for a particular condition, a department-level designation in that discipline tells you more than either hospital's overall grade.

3. What "international department" actually means

Many large Chinese hospitals run a separate service tier variously called an international medical department, a VIP department or a special-needs department (特需). It is worth being precise about what this is, because a lot of marketing is imprecise about it.

So the premium largely buys access, time and setting, an appointment instead of a queue, a longer consultation, a private room, and a better chance of being understood. It does not buy a different operating theatre. Whether that is worth paying for depends on what you are there for; for a complex case where communication matters it very often is.

4. Public and private

5. How to verify any of it yourself

Everything in this area is checkable. You do not have to believe an agency, a hospital's own marketing, or this page.

1. Licence to practise. Medical institutions in China operate under a practising licence issued by health authorities. Provincial and municipal health commissions publish registers of licensed institutions.
2. Physician registration. Physicians are registered, and registration information is publicly queryable through the national health authority's platform. A named doctor who cannot be found in a register is a reason to ask more questions.
3. Grade and designations. A hospital's tier and grade, and any national centre or key specialty designation, are stated publicly and are usually easy to confirm from more than one source.
4. JCI accreditation. International, voluntary, and published by the accrediting body itself, so it can be checked at source rather than taken from a hospital's own page.
5. Ask the institution directly, in writing. A serious institution answers questions about its own grade, designations and experience with international patients. Reluctance is itself informative.

If you would like help reading what comes back, Chinese-language registers included, that is squarely what we do.

Reading the clinicians is a separate skill with its own vocabulary, ranks, academic titles and appointment tiers. How to read a Chinese doctor's credentials covers it.

6. Why we don't publish a hospital list

Three reasons, in order of how much they matter.

• We would be naming institutions we have no authority to name. Publishing a hospital's name, description and imagery as part of our offering implies a relationship. Where none exists, that is misleading; where one does, it should be disclosed rather than implied.
• A list implies a recommendation. The moment we rank or select, we are answering a question that belongs to a physician who has read your file.
• The useful version is unpublishable. Which institution suits a case depends on the case. A page cannot know that, and a page pretending to know it is selling certainty it does not have.

What we do publish is a plain list of the institutions people ask us about, name, city, ownership and grade, and nothing else. No descriptions of what any of them is good at, because that is exactly the part we would be making up.

What we will do, once your case has actually been assessed, is tell you plainly what we know and don't know about the institutions in question, including where our knowledge ends.