Beijing · China
Getting treatment in Beijing as a foreigner
Beijing is where China sends its difficult cases. That is the reason to come, and also the reason it is hard to get an appointment: the two national referral hospitals here are booked by the whole country, not by the city. What makes Beijing workable for a foreign patient is the international wing of each hospital — a separate entrance, a separate phone line, and a separate queue.
The case for the city
What Beijing is actually for
Three things, and the first one is the only one that matters for most patients.
A referral hospital, not a city hospital. Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) is designated by the national health commission as the country’s centre for difficult and rare cases, and it has held the top place in China’s hospital rankings for more than a decade. Its international medical service has looked after embassy staff and foreign residents since 1951. If you already have a diagnosis and a plan, you probably do not need Beijing. If three doctors at home disagree, this is one of the few places in the world with the volume to settle it.
Two national centres in one city. China-Japan Friendship Hospital carries the national respiratory centre and one of the largest lung transplant programmes in the country. Its international department sits in its own building, set apart from the main clinical halls, and runs outpatient services in Chinese, English and Japanese — confirmed on the Chaoyang district government’s own English listing.
A municipal hospital that answers in six languages. Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, run by the city rather than the ministry, lists outpatient service in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Korean. It is the practical option when your problem is urgent but not rare, and you cannot wait for a referral slot at a national centre.
Option one
Three public international departments
All three are tertiary hospitals. The difference is what they are built to do: settle a diagnosis, treat a chest, or see you quickly in your own language.
| Hospital | Known for | International channel | Official site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peking Union Medical College Hospital 北京协和医院国际医疗部 |
Difficult and rare diagnoses, endocrinology, rheumatology, pathology review | International Medical Services since 1951; 24/7 emergency; English online booking inside the PUMCH app | ims.pumch.cn |
| China-Japan Friendship Hospital 中日友好医院国际医疗部 |
Respiratory medicine, thoracic surgery, lung transplantation, integrated Chinese and Western medicine | Standalone international building; outpatient service in Chinese, English and Japanese; direct billing with commercial insurers | zryhyy.com.cn |
| Beijing Chaoyang Hospital 首都医科大学附属北京朝阳医院 |
Cardiology, respiratory and critical care, emergency and trauma | Municipal tertiary hospital; outpatient languages listed by the district government as Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Korean | Chaoyang district listing |
On addresses and phone numbers: we deliberately do not print street addresses on this page. Beijing hospital campuses are large, departments move between buildings, and a wrong building number costs you half a day in traffic. Take the current address and the international desk’s direct line from the hospital’s own site, or from the appointment confirmation.
Why PUMCH is not a walk-in
Its general outpatient slots are released to a national booking pool and are gone within minutes. Turning up at the gate without an appointment is the single most common wasted day in Chinese medical travel. The international wing exists precisely to bypass that queue — it costs more, it answers a phone in English, and it is the only realistic route in for a self-paying foreign patient.
Why the chest hospital is a separate decision
For anything respiratory — a lung nodule that needs a decision, interstitial lung disease, thoracic surgery — China-Japan Friendship is not a fallback to PUMCH, it is the national centre for that organ. Its international outpatient building is also quieter and easier to navigate than a ministry referral hospital. Match the organ first, the reputation second.
Source: zryhyy.com.cn
Option two
Private international hospitals
Two names come up consistently. Beijing United Family Hospital runs a 24-hour emergency department and an appointment-driven outpatient service built for English-speaking families, with direct billing for most international policies. OASIS International Hospital (明德) is a smaller private general hospital in Chaoyang, accredited by Joint Commission International, with a 24-hour emergency department and direct billing with more than a hundred insurers.
What you are buying is a fixed process: an appointment time that means something, a consultation that runs to a half hour, English without an interpreter, and one bill at the end. For a child with a fever, a fracture, a routine screening, or a prescription refill, that is a reasonable purchase. For a condition that needs a named professor who has done the operation two hundred times, it is not where that person works.
Before you fly
How to book, and what to have ready
The booking sequence that works
- Contact the international department, not the main switchboard — PUMCH runs a dedicated international appointment line and an embassy line; the general number will not help you.
- Use the hospital app where one exists — PUMCH lets you book through the international interface in English, and a Chinese friend can add you as a patient on their account.
- Send the records before the appointment — imaging on disc and the pathology report decide whether you get ten minutes or forty.
- Ask which campus — several Beijing hospitals run more than one, and the international service is usually at one of them only.
- Get the confirmation in writing — you will be asked for it at the entrance, and the guard will not be impressed by a screenshot of a chat.
What to carry on the day
Passport, original — registration for foreign patients runs on the passport number, and a copy will not open the record.
Pathology slides and blocks — if the question is a diagnosis, the tissue matters more than the report about the tissue.
Prior imaging as DICOM files — on a disc or a USB stick. Photos of a screen cannot be measured or compared.
A Chinese address and phone number — the registration form asks for both, usually at the worst possible moment.
Realistic timing: the international wing of a Beijing referral hospital can usually see you within days, but the imaging slot is the bottleneck — an MRI or a PET scan can add a week at a busy centre. If your trip is short, book the imaging at the same time as the consultation, not after it. Our stay-length guide works through the arithmetic.
Getting in
Two airports on opposite sides of the city
Beijing Capital (PEK) is north-east of the centre; Daxing (PKX) is far to the south. They are roughly 40 km apart and connected by a dedicated rail link, but the practical point is simpler: the airport on your ticket should decide which district you book a hotel in.
| From | Best option | Time | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital (PEK) | Capital Airport Express to Dongzhimen or Sanyuanqiao | About 25 min to Dongzhimen | RMB 25 flat, any distance |
| Capital (PEK) | Taxi or ride-hailing | 30–60 min depending on traffic | Roughly RMB 100–150 |
| Daxing (PKX) | Daxing Airport Express to Caoqiao | About 20 min | RMB 35, then a metro connection |
| Daxing (PKX) | Taxi or ride-hailing | 45–75 min | Roughly RMB 180–250 |
Two things that trip people up: the airport express trains stop running around 23:00, so a late arrival means a taxi whether you planned one or not. And Caoqiao is not the city centre — it is a metro interchange on the south side, useful if your hospital is in Xicheng or Fengtai, awkward if it is in Chaoyang.
If you land at one airport and your hospital is near the other, take the inter-airport rail link rather than a taxi; it crosses the city in well under an hour and is not exposed to the ring-road traffic that makes Beijing taxi times unpredictable.
Where to base yourself
Pick the district by the hospital
We publish no hotel prices. What we can tell you is which district puts you within walking or one-metro-ride distance of which hospital.
Dongcheng — for PUMCH
The referral hospital sits just north of Wangfujing, which is also the most central hotel cluster in the city. If your appointments are at PUMCH and you have several of them, staying here removes the commute from the equation, which matters more than it sounds when you are tired and unwell.
Chaoyang — for China-Japan Friendship, United Family, OASIS
The embassy district, with the densest concentration of English-speaking services in Beijing: international schools, English-speaking pharmacies, western restaurants, and three of the five hospitals on this page. The trade-off is distance from PUMCH.
Xicheng — for a second opinion elsewhere
Home to Peking University First Hospital and several specialist institutes. Worth considering only if your case has a second stop planned there; otherwise it adds a commute to everything else.
Near Dongzhimen — if you fly into Capital
The airport express terminates here, which makes it the least stressful first night: no taxi negotiation after a long flight, and a metro line to the centre in the morning.
One booking detail: hotels in China are not supposed to refuse foreign guests for lack of special accreditation, but some cheaper properties still do. Book somewhere that states it accepts foreign passports, and avoid arriving after midnight for your first night — the front desk that cannot check you in is much harder to solve at 2am.
The practical layer
Language, payment, and getting around
Language. Inside an international department, English is routine; at PUMCH the appointment line and the app both work in English. Outside it — the cashier, the pharmacy, the imaging desk — it is not. Beijing taxi drivers speak no English and will not read a Latin-script address: have the destination written in Chinese characters before you get in.
Payment. Public international departments take international cards more reliably than ordinary cashiers, but not everywhere and not always on the first attempt. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with a foreign card before you fly. Our payment guide covers the setup and the failure modes.
Getting around. The metro is fast, cheap and signed in English, but the lines are crowded at rush hour and some interchanges involve long walks. Foreign contactless cards work at many gates but not all, so carry a transit card or set up the metro app as a backup. For hospital days, a taxi is often the better purchase — Beijing traffic is bad, but so is a two-kilometre underground transfer when you are in pain.
The sequence
Your first 48 hours, in order
Day one — land and set up
1. Get a local SIM or eSIM at the airport. Hospital apps, ride-hailing and your hotel all want a working local number.
2. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay on airport wifi, not at a cashier under pressure.
3. Confirm the appointment and the campus by phone. Ask which gate and which building — not which hospital.
4. Sleep on local time. You will be asked detailed questions about your history, and jet lag makes those answers worse.
Day two — be seen
1. Arrive early with your passport. Registration for a foreign patient takes longer than the local queue, not shorter.
2. Bring the original imaging and the pathology material if there is any. The appointment is worth more when the doctor can look at the actual data.
3. Ask for the plan in writing — what is being tested, what it costs, when the result arrives.
4. Request copies of the records before you leave, as described in our records guide. Getting them later from another country is much harder.
Questions we get
Short answers
Do I need a referral letter to get into PUMCH?
Not formally, but it changes the visit. With a referral and complete records you are booked as a consultation; without them you are booked as a first visit, and the first visit may be spent ordering tests you already have at home.
Which airport should I book?
Whichever your ticket says, then a hotel near the matching hospital. Daxing is newer and quieter but sits far south; if your treatment is in Chaoyang, landing at Daxing adds an hour you will feel on the way to your first appointment.
Will my insurance be billed directly?
At China-Japan Friendship and at the private hospitals, often yes; at many others, you pay and claim afterwards. Ask for a guarantee of payment before you travel, and read how US insurance works in Chinese hospitals.
Can I just walk into an ordinary clinic?
You can queue, in Chinese, from early morning, for a slot that may already be gone. For a foreign patient with limited days, the international wing is the realistic entry point — it costs more and it works.
Is Beijing the right city for surgery?
Only if the operation is one Beijing is known for. If it is a common procedure, a good provincial centre will do it with a shorter wait and a similar standard; come to Beijing for the diagnosis or the operation that only a handful of teams do.
Related guides
Read next
City guides
The same guide for other cities
- Shanghai — the deepest bench of public international departments in the country
- Guangzhou — the 1979 Huqiao wing, Sun Yat-sen First and Clifford
- Shenzhen — HKU-SZH’s international centre and the border-city advantage
- Chengdu — West China’s international centre and the deposit rule
- Chongqing — a purpose-built international ward in Jinshan, and forty specialties behind it
- Wuhan — Hubei’s first international outpatient department, on the ninth floor
- Changsha — three separate Xiangya hospitals and which one to pick
- Zhengzhou — a 2018 international centre, and the country’s biggest hospital next door
- Jinan — the provincial hospital’s appointment-only international floor
- Qingdao — a 2003 international clinic and a Korean-speaking nursing team
- Nanning — the ASEAN medical centre, and the cheapest gateway from Southeast Asia
- Fuzhou — heart and blood at the top level, an hour from Taipei
- Xiamen — a 2025 international department, Taiwan NHI paperwork, and an airport on the move
Not sure which city? Start with the hospital library, or read the travel guide before booking anything.
Sources for this page:
PUMCH International Medical Services ·
China-Japan Friendship Hospital ·
Chaoyang district government — hospitals open to foreign patients ·
Beijing United Family Hospital ·
OASIS International Hospital ·
Beijing municipal fare schedule and airport rail operator timetables for transport figures.
Airport times and fares are operator-published ranges and change; treat them as planning figures, not quotations. Sources verified 1 November 2026.