Why India
India is the right answer for some cases and the wrong answer for others.
The argument for India isn’t that it is cheap. It’s that for a specific kind of case, the combination of scarce expertise, high volume and total cost stacks up.
India makes sense when the absolute saving is large enough to justify a long flight, and when the expertise you need is available and practised in volume. That describes complex and revision orthopaedics, spinal surgery and cardiac surgery.
It doesn’t make sense for straightforward procedures where a closer country offers a similar saving, and it doesn’t make sense at all if you’re not fit to fly.
The genuine arguments
Four things that hold up about Indian healthcare.
Volume, in the procedures that matter
Leading Indian centres perform certain procedures at volumes that individual surgeons in smaller health systems rarely reach. For complex surgery, repetition is one of the few factors consistently associated with better results.
This is the strongest argument for India and it is specific rather than general. It applies to the surgeon and centre you’re sent to, which is why choosing correctly matters more than choosing the country.
Accredited infrastructure exists, and is checkable
India has a real hospital accreditation system in NABH, and several hospitals also hold JCI. The current NABH standards include requirements on transfer, discharge and continuity of care.
That’s a floor rather than a ranking. See what accreditation does and doesn’t prove.
Clinical communication happens in English
Medical education in India is conducted in English, and clinical records, discharge summaries and correspondence are written in English.
For a patient from Canada, the UK or Ireland this matters more than it sounds. It means your discharge documentation arrives in a language your own doctor can read without translation, which removes one of the most common failure points when patients come home.
There is established infrastructure for international patients
India receives a substantial number of patients from abroad each year, and the larger hospitals have departments built around them.
644,387
foreign tourist arrivals to India were recorded for medical purposes in 2024
Bureau of Immigration, via the Ministry of Tourism Checked 2026-08-19.
The fact that argues against us
We're not plugging you into an existing flow of patients like you.
This is the most uncomfortable thing on this page and you should know it before you decide.
88 percent
Around 88 percent of India's international patients come from Bangladesh, Iraq, the Maldives, Afghanistan, Oman, Yemen, Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania
Secondary reporting Checked 2026-08-19.
Important as a risk flag rather than a selling point. It means we are not tapping an existing high income flow to India. With the exception of Oman, we are trying to create one.
The great majority of India’s international patients come from lower and middle income countries, often for reasons of cost and access rather than choice of excellence. Patients from Canada, the UK and Ireland are a small minority.
That’s two implications, and we would rather say them than have you discover them.
First, the systems around international patients are largely built for a different kind of patient than you, which is exactly the gap our coordination is meant to fill.
Second, we’re not riding an established trend. We’re arguing that a specific set of complex cases is worth travelling for. That’s a real argument, and it isn’t the same as saying everyone from Toronto should come to India.
When India is the wrong answer
Cases where we would tell you not to travel.
We earn nothing extra from putting you on a plane, so this list costs us nothing to publish and is worth more to you than the one above.
Don’t travel for these
- Straightforward hip or knee replacement, if you’re in Canada. Mexico is four hours away. If you’re in the UK or Ireland, Poland is closer still. On a modest difference, a ten hour flight on a fresh joint isn’t a rational trade
- Anything urgent or emergency. Time matters more than cost or quality
- Dental and cosmetic work. Other countries own that market and we don’t do it
- Conditions needing frequent in-person adjustment over months, where you would have to keep returning
- Cases where your own doctor believes you’re not fit to fly. That opinion should win
Reconsider carefully if
- You can’t travel with a companion and the procedure really needs one
- You would be borrowing money you couldn’t repay if recovery took twice as long as planned
- Your own doctor has said clearly they won’t take over your follow-up
- You have complex other conditions that make being far from your usual medical team risky
- The saving, once flights, stay, companion and recovery are added, is under a few thousand dollars
What decides it
The procedure decides this, not the country.
People tend to research this backwards. They pick a country, then look for what they could have done there.
The useful order is the opposite. Start with your specific condition and the specific procedure being recommended. Work out whether you need it at all. Then work out where the required expertise exists, and whether the total cost difference is large enough to justify the journey for that procedure.
For some cases the answer is India. For some it is a country three hours away. For some it is a different operation. And for a meaningful number it is no operation at all, at least not yet.
Find out whether your case is one of the ones worth travelling for.
A free twenty minute conversation. If the answer is that you should stay home, we’ll tell you that.