Tongji Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Tongji Hospital is the strongest hospital in Wuhan and, by the measure that matters most to a foreign patient, the one most explicitly designated for them. Hubei province and Wuhan municipality — through the government, foreign affairs office and health commission — have designated it the first designated hospital for foreign patients and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan compatriots, and it has provided medical care to visiting foreign heads of state for roughly seventy years. It is a preferred institution for consulates in Wuhan, multinational companies and international insurers, and was designated by the Ministry of Health's International Exchange and Cooperation Center in 2013 as an international emergency rescue centre.

Its international department was founded in 2012 as Hubei's first and has served tens of thousands of patients from 44 countries. It runs across two locations with an outpatient clinic, inpatient care, surgery, rehabilitation, health management and preventive care, covering 40-plus clinical specialties, with multi-disciplinary consultation and one-to-one expert appointments backed by full-time translation and accompaniment. It also holds the province's first international-department ICU ward, and works with overseas insurers offering international payment and direct billing.

It also maintains English and German versions of its website, the German being a legacy of the Paulun era — unusual for a Chinese hospital.

Before you rely on this: Tongji's inpatient rules forbid patients from leaving the hospital or staying outside overnight for the duration of an admission, and visiting is only allowed 15:00-20:00 on weekdays and 10:00-20:00 at weekends and public holidays, with ICU, neonatal and special-infection patients refusing visitors altogether. A companion may stay only if a doctor orders it and then only one person can - so a relative, carer or interpreter cannot simply move in beside the bed, and the visiting hours will not fit a working family abroad.

Two sites: the Optical Valley (Guanggu) campus and the Hankou campus. The international department publishes its appointment details as images rather than text, so email is the reliable route to a first contact — the addresses below were read directly from the official page.