If something goes wrong

Where responsibility sits

Your treating hospital and its clinicians are responsible for your medical care, including the management of any complication arising from it. They are independent providers; they are not our employees or our agents, and we do not make clinical decisions.

What we do is coordinate the response on the ground: get you back in front of the right department, interpret the conversation, and keep your people at home informed. That is a real service and it is not nothing, but it is not the same as clinical responsibility, and we would rather be precise about the difference now than during an emergency.

Settle these before you fly

Every one of these is easier to answer while you are still deciding than after an operation has not gone as planned. We put the answers in writing as part of your quote.

• If a revision procedure is needed during your stay, who pays for it?
• How long can you remain in China if recovery takes longer than expected, and what does your entry permission allow?
• What is the hospital's process if you are dissatisfied with your care?
• Who at home will manage your follow-up, and have they agreed to?
• What happens to your accommodation booking if your stay extends?

Flying home

Being medically fit to fly is a clinical judgement, not a scheduling preference. Airlines apply their own rules after surgery, and the risk of venous thromboembolism on a long-haul flight after an operation is real. Your treating team will advise when it is safe, and that date can move.

Build slack into your return booking, and prefer a changeable fare. The cost of flexibility is small against the cost of flying before you should.

Insurance worth considering

Medical evacuation and repatriation cover is worth pricing, even though it will not cover the planned treatment itself. It addresses a different problem: getting you home safely if something happens that local care cannot resolve. Read what it excludes, particularly around care you travelled for deliberately.

Where you actually stand

Pursuing a malpractice claim against a hospital in another country is substantially harder than doing so at home. Different law applies, proceedings are conducted in Chinese, and any judgement has to be enforced where the hospital is. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

We are not saying this to talk you out of travelling. Many thousands of people travel for treatment every year and do well. But you should weigh it honestly alongside the cost saving or the shorter wait that brought you here, and decide with your eyes open.