Patient safety
How to check a hospital, and what checking can’t tell you.
You’re being asked to trust an institution you can’t visit and a surgeon you can’t meet. Here’s what can be verified, and what can’t.
You can verify accreditation, registration, procedure volume and subspecialty training. You can’t verify risk-adjusted outcomes, because almost nowhere in the world publishes surgeon-level outcome data in a form you could compare.
Anyone who tells you they can rank surgeons by outcome quality is describing data that doesn’t exist publicly. That’s a gap in the whole industry, not a secret we have access to.
What accreditation means
Accreditation is a process signal, not an outcome guarantee.
India’s main hospital accreditation is NABH. Some hospitals also hold JCI, which is international. Both are real and both are worth having. What they assess is whether a hospital has proper systems: infection control, medication safety, record keeping, consent, discharge planning.
What they don’t tell you is how good your particular surgeon is at your particular operation. A hospital can be fully accredited and still have a wide spread of individual results, exactly as in Canada, the UK or Ireland.
So treat accreditation as a floor, not a recommendation. It rules out the worst. It doesn’t identify the best.
One accreditation detail that is useful to you
The current NABH standards include a chapter covering transfer, discharge and continuity of care, and require that patients are given adequate information on discharge.
NABH Hospital Accreditation Standards, 6th Edition Checked 2026-08-19.
That matters because when we ask a hospital for a proper written handover for your doctor at home, we’re asking them to evidence a standard they are already assessed against. We’re not asking for a favour.
Verify these yourself
Eight checks you can make without us.
We would rather you knew how to do this than depended on us to do it. If you use another company, use this list on them.
1. Current accreditation status
Check it on the accrediting body’s own register, not on the hospital’s website. Accreditation lapses, and websites are slow to admit it. Confirm the status is current and covers the site you would be treated at, since large chains have multiple locations with different status.
2. The surgeon’s registration
Every practising doctor in India is registered with a state medical council or the national register. Ask for the registration number and check it. A reputable surgeon won’t be offended by this.
3. Subspecialty training, not just seniority
A very experienced general orthopaedic surgeon isn’t the same as a surgeon who does revision hip work every week. For complex cases, subspecialty focus matters more than total years.
4. Volume for your specific procedure
Ask how many of your operation this surgeon performs a year, and how many the hospital performs. Volume is one of the few things that is both askable and meaningfully associated with results across many procedures.
Ask it in writing. A number given verbally on a call isn’t a number.
5. Who is actually operating
Get the named surgeon in writing, and ask what happens if they are unavailable on the day. Being introduced to a senior name and operated on by someone else is a real and specific complaint in medical travel.
6. What the implant or device is
Ask for the manufacturer and model, in writing, before surgery. You need this later for your own records, and your doctor at home will need it if anything goes wrong years from now.
7. The discharge and handover plan
Ask, before you commit, exactly what documentation you’ll leave with and whether the surgeon will speak to your doctor at home. If the answer is vague, that is your answer.
8. What happens if there is a complication
Who pays for a longer stay. Who pays if you need a second procedure before flying home. Whether your insurance covers planned treatment abroad, which many policies don’t. Get all of it in writing.
The honest gap
What nobody can tell you, including us.
Risk-adjusted mortality, infection and readmission rates by hospital and by surgeon are not published in comparable form. Not in India, and not in most of the countries our patients come from either. Western systems publish somewhat more, but not by as much as people assume.
This means nobody, anywhere, can hand you a reliable quality ranking of surgeons. If a company implies they can, ask to see the dataset.
What we can do is use the signals that do exist, and be honest that they are proxies: accreditation, registration, subspecialty focus, procedure volume, and the independent judgement of specialists who have no financial interest in the answer.
We’re also collecting outcome information on our own patients by hand from our first case. Over time that becomes something real. Today it isn’t, and we’re not going to imply we know more than we do.
Before you travel
Plan for the version where things don't go smoothly.
Have these settled in writing first
- Who your named surgeon is, and the fallback if they are unavailable
- Cost per extra night, beyond the package
- What happens, and who pays, if a complication needs treating in India
- Whether your insurance covers planned treatment abroad
- Your flight flexibility, in case you can’t fly on the planned date
- Exactly what documents you’ll leave the hospital with
- Who your doctor at home should contact, and how
Reasons to postpone or not go
- You can’t get the surgeon named in writing
- The quote has no written exclusion list
- Nobody will discuss what happens if there is a complication
- You’re being pushed to decide quickly, or offered a time-limited discount
- Your own doctor thinks you’re not fit to fly, and is being ignored
- You have no companion and the procedure needs one
- You would have to borrow money you can’t repay if recovery takes longer
What we will not do
Two things we'll never claim.
We’ll never guarantee a clinical outcome. Nobody honest can. Surgery carries risk wherever it is performed and by whoever performs it.
We’ll never tell you a hospital is safe because it is on a list we were paid to put it on. No hospital pays us anything, which is the only structural reason to believe the rest of this page.
How we’re paid and our medical disclaimer.