1,28 triệu bệnh nhân quốc tế: +73,6% sau ba năm

The 1.28 million figure is usually built by adding three different counts: arrivals declared at the border as medical or wellness travel; visits registered by international departments of major tertiary hospitals, where one patient attending eight times in a course counts eight times; and case volumes reported by agencies and platforms. Because the units differ, adding them together double-counts.

Converting visits into surgical volume requires a discount. Based on structures disclosed by leading international departments, roughly 20% to 30% of visits involve inpatient surgery; the rest are health checks, TCM therapy, outpatient consultations, second opinions and follow-ups. The inpatient surgical volume behind 1.28 million visits is therefore in the hundreds of thousands, not 1.28 million. The distinction matters, because it determines which metrics you should use to evaluate a hospital.

• Visits are not patients: repeat attendance within one course is counted repeatedly.
• Whether residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and long-term foreign residents, are included changes the total substantially.
• Reporting cut-off dates differ between organisations; cross-year comparisons must state the window.
• Border declarations of medical travel and patients actually treated at tertiary hospitals are two different populations.

2022 was an artificially low base. Comparing 2022 with 2025 directly means a large part of the growth is recovery rather than new demand. Without a base adjustment, 73.6% reads as a demand explosion, which is the most common misinterpretation.

The genuinely structural additions come from three directions: referrals driven by scarce specialist capacity in neighbouring countries; a widening price gap as the renminbi weakened while Western costs and waiting lists grew; and social media turning medical travel to China from an information gap into a searchable, price-comparable option.

• Base effect: cross-border movement was restricted in 2022, depressing the denominator.
• Visas and flights: transit visa-free extended to 240 hours, unilateral visa-free lists expanded, international capacity restored.
• Social media: short-form video turned dentistry, eye surgery and TCM into recognisable consumer options.
• Price and waiting time: rising self-pay costs in Europe and the US, longer public waiting lists, a stable arbitrage.

Source markets correlate strongly with case mix. Regions that are geographically close with capacity constraints send the most patients; regions with high purchasing power and high service expectations concentrate at a small number of leading hospitals.

Ordering follows public reporting and hospital disclosures; exact shares vary widely by source and are not cited precisely here.

Public imagination focuses on oncology and transplantation, but by visit count the leaders are health screening, TCM therapy, dentistry, refractive surgery and fertility. Their shared features are low decision cost, short cycles, predictable outcomes and contained downside risk.

This explains why the marketing narrative rarely matches the actual footfall: marketing sells complexity, transactions are standardised.

• Health screening: 1–3 days with imaging and tumour markers; a few thousand renminbi.
• TCM acupuncture, tuina and rehabilitation: 7–14 day courses, easy to bundle with screening.
• Dental implants and restorations: 1–3 visits, but 3–6 months of osseointegration.
• Refractive surgery: one day of work-up, one day of surgery, one day of review.
• Fertility: a full cycle runs 20–30 days, beyond the 10-day visa-free window.
• Oncology surgery and radiotherapy: 3–8 weeks, requiring a medical visa.

Screening sits in the low thousands of renminbi; dentistry and refractive surgery in the tens of thousands; TCM courses vary by modality and duration; oncology and transplant cases can reach hundreds of thousands. The industry phrase average spend per medical traveller averages across these categories and is close to meaningless.

A more useful approach is total cost by indication, plus three hidden costs: companion accommodation, return travel for follow-up, and a reserve for managing complications.

Leading hospitals now run international departments as standalone units: separate registration, separate wards, English-language records, direct billing with insurers, dedicated coordinators and interpreters. That is good for patients, but one thing must be understood — the international department and the general clinic are two price lists and two waiting lists. The same specialist may be available next week internationally and in two months through general registration.

• International department pricing is typically 3–10 times the general clinic, yet still below most Western self-pay rates.
• Specialist appointments run in weeks, popular teams in months; operating theatre slots are scarcer than clinic slots.
• Insurance direct billing is limited; confirm network status before booking.
• Translation quality for English records varies widely; request bilingual versions of key reports and keep the original imaging.

Translating macro numbers into a personal decision requires only four variables: waiting time, price structure, language and process, and continuity of follow-up. The first two pull you in; the last two are the cost of entry.

• Waiting time: the most reliable advantage. Most investigations at tertiary hospitals complete within 1–3 days and surgery is scheduled in weeks, not months.
• Price: transparent does not mean cheap. International departments, VIP services and specially permitted devices are market-priced; insist on a written quotation.
• Language and process: language can be bought, process must be managed — registration, payment, reports and scheduling sit at different counters.
• Follow-up: the most overlooked cost. If you cannot return at one and three months, obtain a complete discharge summary and imaging disc for your doctor at home.

First, treating visits as operations. Check: does the hospital disclose visits or procedures? The two are not interchangeable.

Second, treating marketing numbers as clinical results. Check: efficacy claims rest on three things only — peer-reviewed papers, registered trial identifiers, and hospital statistics with a stated follow-up period. A brochure claim of 99% success is not data.

Third, treating a single case as the average. Check: ask the operating surgeon how many procedures of this type they perform annually, the complication rate, and who manages complications. Teams that answer those three questions precisely usually deserve trust.

Macro figures tell you about trends, not about which hospital to choose. Selection still comes down to verifiable metrics.

• Shortlist by specialty ranking and annual surgical volume, not by the number of international patients received.
• Ask three concrete numbers: annual volume of the operating surgeon, complication rate for this procedure, follow-up duration.
• Cross-check with publications and guideline participation; PubMed author and affiliation searches work well.
• Budget for visas, follow-up and complication management, not just the surgical fee.

The 1.28 million and 73.6% figures are industry aggregates and are not equivalent to official statistics: the National Immigration Administration counts border arrivals across all purposes, while the national health statistical bulletin counts hospital admissions. The statistical populations, time units and counting rules all differ.

Cite them with their definition attached, and for clinical decisions rely on written hospital documentation plus original pathology and imaging. This article is intended to calibrate magnitude and trend, not to substitute for medical advice.