Chongqing – Expatriate Healthcare
As per recent China census in the last years, Chongqing is ranked #1 most populous municipality in Mainland. It is also directly controlled municipality alongside as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. Location of the city is in-between two major rivers, which led Chongqing to establish itself as a major transportation hub within the country. As a result, it became a very attractive destination for expatriates for relocation. All because more and more multinational companies open branch offices there. So where to get good expatriate healthcare in Chongqing?
Home to several major international and bilingual schools in China, Chongqing offers quality international healthcare to foreigners. Choices vary primarily with some large government run public medical facilities with International Departments. There are however also several foreign international hospitals and clinics.
Chongqing Expat Health Insurance
Below is the list of some of the most popular medical facilities with English speaking doctors. Foreigners and expatriates can get good quality care in Chongqing in those. Most of them have direct billing services with major insurance companies in China. This means you can go directly to obtain outpatient care without any extra steps. Always make sure to bring your medical card as proof of your cover. In that case medical facility can verify right away what benefits and policy structure you have as well as help you to arrange bills to be sent to your insurance providers. There might be some situations when you will need to take some extra steps beforehand. Such things might include pre-authorization or even applying for GOP (Guarantee of Payment Letter) for the elective medical treatment.
Raffles Hospital Chongqing 慎安（重庆）医院（RAFFLES 重庆渝北店）
Global Doctor – Chongqing Clinic 重庆环球医生诊所
Chongqing Wuzhou Women’s&Children’s Hospital 重庆五洲妇儿医院
Chongqing Hoeye Hospital 重庆何氏眼科医院
Chongqing Life Infinity Clinic 重庆聚美力诊所（重庆生命汇）
Songshan General Hospital 重庆松山医院
How to receive a treatment in hospital in Chongqing
Most of the time you can enjoy direct billing or guarantee of payment for outpatient care, if your insurance provider has such services. Inpatient care or hospitalization is very different. In many public hospitals they will require you pay deposit upfront before you can access any long term care.
Hospital will return you deposit once they received payment from insurance company. How much of deposit are we talking about, this largely depends on the treatment you are about to receive and is usually somewhere in the range 10-25% of the total costs of it. It is your duty then to notify insurance provider as fast as you can so they can start processing payment to medical facility. Notification can come pretty much from anyone, even a nurse at a hospital if she is willing to help you with that. In private facilities such as Raffles they have experience with that and will do everything for you. In government run hospitals it is quite often you will need to help insurance company and chase hospital representatives for extra documents before they can approve payment, such as detailed treatment plan, costs estimations and so on.
If you are already in Chongqing and looking for health insurance to give you great services and access to expatriate level of medical care – get in touch so we can help.
For more details about English speaking doctors in China visit our another article