Due diligence on a partner clinic means asking for documents and checking them at the source, not accepting claims. This scorecard turns that into 40 questions across eight sections — legal and licence, accreditation and quality, physicians and credentials, facilities and capacity, safety, complications and insurance, international-patient operations, commercial terms and transparency, and data protection and references — each with the evidence to request, the register to check it in and a red flag. Every answer is Verified (document seen and checked at the source), Claimed (the clinic says so), Not provided or No. Verified counts in full, Claimed 40% and the rest nothing; the result is a score from 0 to 100 and a traffic-light verdict, with four stop questions — operating licence, licensed physicians, liability insurance and an emergency plan — that cap the verdict at stop whatever the score. The criteria are onMESSE’s own checklist, not a legal standard or medical advice; everything runs in your browser and the answers travel in the page link.
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A partner clinic is not vetted by its brochure. Before an agency sends a first patient, someone has to ask for the licence, the physicians’ registration numbers, the insurance certificate and the emergency plan — and check each one where it was issued. This scorecard turns that routine into 40 questions you can answer with Verified, Claimed, Not provided or No.
The scorecard sits at the top of this page as a dossier. Eight folder tabs run along the top, one per section, each showing how many of its five questions you have answered. Every question is an evidence row: what to ask, the document types to request, a link to the register where the document can be checked and a four-state control. A red-flag drawer under each row says what a bad answer looks like. The verdict slip beside the folder fills in as you go — score, stop questions and a stamp (proceed, proceed with conditions or stop) — and below it you get the prioritised list of missing evidence, a copy-ready message to send to the clinic and a one-page printable report. Your answers are written into the page address, so the link reopens the same dossier.
There is no single global register of good clinics. Licences are issued by national or regional health authorities, accreditation is often voluntary and awarded by separate accrediting bodies, and physicians are registered in each country’s own register. In Türkiye, for example, a health facility serving international patients needs the International Health Tourism Authorization Certificate (Article 5 of the Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health, Official Gazette 26 April 2025, No. 32882), and the Ministry of Health publishes the authorised facilities as lists of hospitals, medical centres, practices and other facilities. Elsewhere the lookup is a different register — the Dubai Medical Registry on DHA’s Sheryan portal, or Spain’s REGCESS. That is why this scorecard works with evidence types and the place to check each one, not with a single national rule.
Verified is not the same as Claimed. A clinic that says it is accredited has made a claim; a clinic that sends a certificate with a number, scope and validity dates that you then find in the issuer’s directory has given evidence. TEMOS’s own list of accredited and assessed partners, for instance, shows each organisation’s status but not certificate dates, so a complete check has two steps: the directory entry and the certificate the clinic hands you. Where a register has no public search, ask for the document and confirm it with the issuing authority by email.
Three worked examples, all 40 questions answered. A clinic that only claims everything scores 40 and is a stop. A clinic with every answer Verified except the operating licence, which it did not provide, scores 96 — and is still a stop, because the licence is a stop question. A clinic with every answer Verified except that its four stop questions are only claimed scores 91 and reads as proceed with conditions until the four documents arrive.
Clinics: a dossier that passes this scorecard is exactly what agencies ask for. Exhibit at Health onMESSE and put your licence, accreditation and physician profiles in front of agencies — agencies join free.
Start with the licence, because everything else is built on it. Ask for the operating licence of the premises and for the exact services you plan to use, then match the name, address and services on the document with the contracting entity and the register entry. In Türkiye the check is the Ministry of Health’s list of authorised facilities; in Dubai it is the Dubai Medical Registry on the DHA Sheryan portal; in Spain it is REGCESS, the register fed by the regional authorities; in Mexico COFEPRIS regulates the sanitary licence or notice of operation and the notice naming the sanitary responsible person.
Accreditation is a signal, not a licence. JCI publishes a directory of accredited international organisations, and the 8th edition of its hospital standards has applied since 1 January 2025; TEMOS lists accredited and assessed partners (in the EU it issues an “Assessed Organization” certificate rather than accreditation); ISO certificates can be looked up in IAF CertSearch, which lists only accredited certifications. In Türkiye a Ministry notice of 13 May 2026 requires hospitals, medical centres, laboratories and dialysis centres that hold the health tourism authorisation to be TÜSKA-accredited by 31 December 2026, and other facilities to hold a Ministry-issued certificate. Ask what a certificate covers — site, services, validity dates — not just that one exists.
A clinic is only as safe as the physician in the room. Ask for the names of everyone who will operate, anaesthetise or treat, with their registration numbers, and check each number in the issuing register: India’s National Medical Commission publishes the Indian Medical Register of doctors registered with State Medical Councils; Dubai’s DHA has a licence-status page for professionals; Spain’s REPS gives citizens public data on health professionals authorised to work in Spain; in Mexico the SEP’s Registro Nacional de Profesionistas lets you look up a professional licence (cédula) by number or name. Where no public register exists, ask for the diploma and specialty certificate and confirm them with the issuing authority.
Capacity decides whether a promised slot is real. Ask how many theatres, beds or chairs the clinic has, how sterilisation, laboratory and pharmacy are arranged, and see the premises — by video walk-through if you cannot visit. Look for what a brochure leaves out: a separate sterile-processing area, a recovery room, a maintenance log for the equipment, and licences for laboratory, imaging and pharmacy where the country requires them.
Four questions here are about what happens when something goes wrong. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (2008) and its 2009 implementation manual describe three pauses — before anaesthesia, before incision and before the patient leaves the theatre — that a clinic can show on paper. Ask for professional-liability and complication cover that includes foreign patients: Directive 2011/24/EU (Article 4(2)(d)) requires EU Member States to have professional-liability insurance or a comparable guarantee in place for treatment on their territory, and Türkiye’s 2025 health tourism regulation (Article 6(1)(c)) requires complication insurance for surgical and interventional procedures in operating rooms. Insist on a written emergency plan with a named ICU, blood supply and ambulance, and on a written complication and revision policy.
International patients need a process, not just a clinic. A named coordinator reachable on working days and in an emergency, consent and discharge papers in a language the patient reads, a pre-arrival assessment with a written treatment plan, and a discharge summary and aftercare plan the patient’s home doctor can use are what separate a clinic that treats foreigners from one that serves them. Türkiye’s regulation expects at least one foreign-language-speaking staff member in the international health tourism unit (Article 7(2)) and a website with a foreign-language option (Article 13(2)).
A price is a promise only if it is itemised. Ask for a written quote that states what is included — surgeon, anaesthesia, stay, implants, medicines, follow-up — and what is not. In the EU, Directive 2011/24/EU (Article 4(2)(b)) requires healthcare providers to give clear invoices and clear price information, and to inform patients about their authorisation or registration status and insurance cover; Article 4(2)(c) calls for transparent complaints procedures. Türkiye’s regulation requires a sales receipt or invoice (Article 12(1)). Commission and price parity between agency and clinic belong in a written agreement; the clinic contract checklist in the related resources lists the clauses.
Health data is the most sensitive thing an agency and a clinic exchange. Ask for the clinic’s privacy notice, who the data controller is and how records and images will move between clinic, agency and the patient’s home doctor. Health data is a special category under the GDPR (Article 9) and under Türkiye’s KVKK (Article 6); KVKK Article 9 on transfers abroad was rewritten by Law No. 7499 and has applied since 1 June 2024; Mexico’s new federal data protection law was published on 20 March 2025; India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 has been coming into force in phases since November 2025. Two or three references you can call, and independent review and complaint records, should match what the clinic tells you.
These are the registers and directories the scorecard links to. A missing public lookup is not a finding about a clinic; it means the document has to be confirmed with the issuing authority.
The NHS advises anyone considering surgery abroad to ask how clinics and surgeons are regulated in the destination country, what training and qualifications the surgeon has, how many similar procedures the surgeon has done and whether the surgeon speaks a language the patient understands. It also advises patients not to pay for a hospital they have never seen or a surgeon they have not met, to check what insurance the clinic or surgeon has and whether it covers them, to ask what happens if there are complications and where follow-up appointments will take place, and it notes that travel insurance does not normally cover things going wrong in surgery.
Those questions are rows of this scorecard: regulation and qualifications (sections 1 and 3), volumes (section 3), language (section 6), insurance and complications (section 5) and aftercare (section 6). An agency that can hand the patient the answers, with the evidence, before booking is answering the questions the patient’s own health service tells them to ask.
Agencies: Health onMESSE is free for agencies — no stand fee and no subscription. Register as an agency to discover clinics, hospitals and hotels and request meetings with the ones that pass your scorecard, or read what agencies get.
A clinic that passes meets agencies at Health onMESSE. Bring the verified dossier — licence, accreditation, physician registration numbers, insurance and emergency plan — to a fair where agencies join free. Exhibit at Health onMESSE, or see what exhibitors get.
More planning tools for this fair are in the Health onMESSE tools directory, and the fair itself is at Health onMESSE.
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