Fuwai Hospital

Fuwai Hospital is the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases (国家心血管病中心) and, for a patient with a heart or vascular condition, it is the single most important institution in China. Its own English site describes it as a national triple-A, first-class hospital specialising in cardiovascular disease.

Two facts should decide it for most cardiovascular patients. First, its case complexity index (CMI) has ranked first nationally for five consecutive years, and it has also ranked first in the national tertiary hospital performance assessment for the surgical specialty group for five years running. Second, the scale is purpose-built: 1,725 open beds, 47 wards, 32 operating theatres and 24 catheterisation laboratories — an institution organised around cardiovascular work rather than general medicine with a cardiology wing.

Its international department covers cardiology and cardiac surgery plus gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, rehabilitation, nutrition and traditional Chinese medicine, and preventive care and inpatient physical examinations. Staff speak English, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

Before you rely on this: Fuwai's published window-registration rules - which the page itself states exclude the special-needs clinic (特需) - are real-name: staff must see the patient's own national ID card, and anyone not yet issued one must produce the household register, or the booking is refused outright. The window also opens only three working days ahead of the visit, and the page states that Saturday and public-holiday clinics are currently not taking bookings rather than that they are permanently closed - so anyone who cannot use the app or WeChat channels must plan on a short, weekday-only window and bring Chinese identity documents.