How this site evaluates hospitals

This site publishes a directory of hospitals, and it tries to be clear about why a hospital is in it. The rule is simple: a hospital is listed when an independent, published listing backs it.

What counts as backing

A hospital enters the directory when at least one of the following is true, and we hold the record for it: it appears in a tier of the Fudan University general list; it holds a place in a Fudan specialty reputation list; it holds a current Joint Commission International accreditation; it carries a national key clinical specialty at evidence level A or B; or it hosts a national clinical research centre or a state key laboratory.

Each of these is published by a body other than the hospital. That is the point. The directory is not a list of hospitals we like; it is a list of hospitals that some independent source has placed on the record.

The kinds of backing are not equal in weight, and the pages do not pretend they are. A national key clinical specialty is a specific, official designation for one department. A JCI accreditation says something about how a hospital is run and inspected, not about one specialty’s depth. A tier on the Fudan general list is a broad reputation signal. Each is shown with its own caliber rather than blended into a single score.

What does not count

Several things that look like backing do not qualify. A hospital’s own description of its strengths does not, because it is self-stated. A nomination rather than a place on the Fudan list does not, because a nomination is not a place. An accreditation that has lapsed or that we cannot confirm does not. A specialty a hospital advertises without an official source does not.

Payment never counts either. No hospital can pay to appear here, and none has been offered the chance.

Every listing carries its year and its source

A place or a tier is only true for the year it was published, so every line of a hospital’s listings shows the year and links to the source it came from. When a field is missing, the page says so rather than filling the gap. A blank we cannot fill is left blank on purpose.

Records we cannot corroborate

Some hospitals are in our records but backed by nothing we can verify. Those records are not listed in the directory, are not returned in search and are not included in the sitemap. Their pages still answer, so an old link keeps working, and they are marked so that search engines do not treat them as listings. Nothing is deleted, and nothing is dressed up as verified. Leaving them unindexed is deliberate: a page a search engine can serve is, in practice, a listing, even without a link from the directory.

What this site does not do

We do not rank hospitals of our own. We do not rank doctors, and there are no doctor pages. We do not write treatment plans and we do not promise outcomes. We do not sell placement in the directory or in any listing on it. Where the site cannot answer a question – languages spoken, insurance billing, waiting times – it says the record is missing instead of guessing. Where we hold no figure for something a patient would reasonably want to know, we would rather show nothing than print a number with no source behind it.

How to check us

Every hospital page states its sources and the year of each listing. The same rules are set out in full on the methodology page, and corrections are logged in public. If a listing here disagrees with its source, the source is right, and we want to know.

Sources

• Hospital Management Institute, Fudan University, Fudan University Hospital Rankings (annual since 2010).
• Joint Commission International, hospital directory.
• National Health Commission of China, national key clinical specialty programme.
• Ministry of Science and Technology of China, national clinical research centres.