Ruijin Hospital

Ruijin Hospital is one of the two most important academic hospitals in Shanghai, with 22 national key clinical specialty programmes and a national key clinical laboratory — among the broadest accredited portfolios in the country. It has 1,893 approved beds (2,139 opened), 4,402 staff and 46 clinical disciplines.

It runs its own international department, published on its own site as a section titled 瑞金医院-国际医疗部, with an outpatient clinic on the 1st floor of Building 10, general-practice wards on the 10th, 11th, 12th, 19th and 20th floors, and its own health-check packages. The Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health lists Ruijin as providing English-language patient service with a dedicated VIP contact channel, and as accepting direct billing from a long list of international insurers including Bupa, Allianz, Cigna, MSH, Ping An, AIA and Generali — one of the broadest confirmed direct-billing insurer lists we are aware of, and naming Bupa, Allianz, Cigna, MSH, AIA and Generali together — a combination we have not seen published by another hospital. If your treatment is funded by an overseas insurer, this is a hospital worth checking first.

Historically it developed the "Ruijin formula" for large-area burn resuscitation, used worldwide, and the "Shanghai regimen" for acute promyelocytic leukaemia, and was among the first in China to perform heart and liver transplants in the 1970s.

Before you rely on this: Ruijin's international (special-needs) centre states that any out-patient having a gastroscopy or colonoscopy under general anaesthesia must be accompanied by a family member, and must not drive or make major decisions on the day - so a patient travelling alone has to arrange a companion before travelling. The same page also requires patients to stop antibiotics for two weeks and acid-suppressing drugs for three days before a H. pylori breath test, which can invalidate a test booked on arrival.