How to Verify a Hospital in India Is Legitimate — A Patient Safety Guide
India has hundreds of private hospitals. Not all of them are equally good. Some are genuinely excellent and internationally accredited. Some are adequate for basic care. Some are not appropriate for the complex procedures that bring international patients to India. And some — particularly ones that advertise aggressively to international patients with unrealistic promises — should be avoided entirely.
For African patients who are relying on a hospital's own marketing material to assess its quality, the information available is entirely curated by the hospital. Independent verification matters.
Here is how to do it.
Check JCI Accreditation Directly
JCI publishes every currently accredited hospital in a searchable public directory at www.jointcommissioninternational.org. Go to the directory, search the hospital name, and confirm:
- The hospital appears in the directory
- The accreditation is current (not expired)
- The hospital name and city match what you were told
This takes two minutes and tells you definitively whether the JCI accreditation claim is true or false. Do not rely on a hospital's website or marketing material claiming JCI accreditation — verify it at the source.
Check NABH Accreditation
NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals) publishes its accredited hospitals at nabh.co. Search the directory and confirm the hospital's NABH status and current accreditation validity.
Search the Hospital Name With "Controversy" or "Problem"
A simple Google search of the hospital name alongside words like "controversy", "complaint", "problem", "issue", or "death" will surface news coverage and patient forum posts about significant negative events. Do this in addition to, not instead of, accreditation checks — a hospital can be accredited and still have had publicised incidents.
Pay attention to whether negative coverage relates to systemic quality problems or isolated incidents. Every hospital of significant volume has had adverse outcomes; the question is whether problems are systemic or outliers.
Look for Published Outcome Data
India's top hospitals — particularly for transplant and cardiac surgery — publish outcome data in peer-reviewed medical journals. A quick search on PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) for the hospital's name alongside the relevant procedure will show whether the hospital publishes research and what their published outcomes data shows.
Hospitals that publish outcome data are hospitals that measure their own results rigorously. Hospitals that do not publish any outcome data may have results they are not keen to publicise.
Medanta's liver transplant programme, led by Dr. A.S. Soin, has multiple peer-reviewed publications. Apollo Proton Cancer Centre — where Dr. Rakesh Jalali has over 300 peer-reviewed publications — is among the most published oncology programmes accessible to international patients.
Be Wary of These Red Flags
Guaranteed outcomes. No legitimate hospital guarantees specific outcomes. Surgery has risks. Cancer treatment has variable response rates. Any hospital that guarantees a cure or a specific result is misrepresenting medicine.
Extreme price discounts. Significantly lower prices than all other hospitals for the same procedure — without a clear structural reason — can indicate reduced standards, uncertified personnel, or bait-and-switch pricing where additional charges emerge after commitment.
Pressure to commit quickly. Legitimate hospitals do not apply time pressure to treatment decisions. If a facilitator or hospital representative is pressing you to confirm quickly before you have had time to research, that is a warning sign.
Unverifiable doctor credentials. Ask for the treating doctor's name and qualifications. Then search for them — medical registration, published work, institutional affiliation. If a doctor's credentials cannot be independently verified, that is a problem.
No physical address or verifiable location. Legitimate Indian hospitals have a verifiable physical address, a listing on Google Maps with reviews and photos, and a website with contact information that actually works.
Promises to arrange the visa for a fee. The Indian e-medical visa is applied for directly by the patient at indianvisaonline.gov.in for approximately USD 25. Any facilitator charging significantly more than this for visa "arrangement" is adding margin to a process the patient can do themselves.
Use a Reputable Medical Tourism Facilitator
This is not a self-promotional point — it is a structural argument. Reputable medical tourism facilitators have existing relationships with specific hospitals. Their business depends on patient outcomes and satisfaction. If they routinely send patients to poor-quality hospitals, they lose business.
Prime Medical Solutions works only with hospitals that carry NABH accreditation at minimum. All of our partner hospitals — Artemis, Fortis FMRI, Apollo Delhi, Max Saket, MGM Healthcare, Yashoda, Sarvodaya, Jaslok, Manipal, Fortis BG Road — can be independently verified.
The conflict of interest in medical tourism facilitation is real — facilitators receive fees from hospitals. The check on this is whether the facilitator's recommendations are verifiably accreditation-based and whether they are willing to tell patients when a particular hospital is not the right fit for their case.
What to Ask the Hospital Directly
Before committing to a hospital for a complex procedure, ask:
What is your annual volume for this specific procedure? High volume matters for outcomes. An acceptable answer for kidney transplant is 50 or more per year. For liver transplant, 100 or more. For bypass surgery, hundreds. If the volume is very low, ask why.
What is your infection rate for this procedure? Hospitals that track this should be able to give you a number or a reference to published data.
What is your one-year mortality or graft survival rate? For transplant cases specifically. Comparable to published data from the same procedure type at major programmes globally.
Who specifically will perform my surgery? Get the surgeon's name, their qualifications, and their experience. Then verify those independently.
Hospitals Prime Medical Has Verified
Every hospital in Prime Medical's network has been evaluated — accreditation verified, specialist credentials checked, patient feedback assessed. We work with these hospitals because they meet the standards our patients need, not because of referral fee maximisation.
If you receive recommendations from sources other than Prime Medical and want a second opinion on whether a hospital is appropriate for your case, share the name with us. We will give you an honest assessment.
To book a consultation, call the number on our website.
