Big-spending foreign nationals are queuing up to be admitted to hospitals in China.
01
A couple of days ago, Lao Lu, who has been working in the inbound tourism sector for years, suddenly sent me a message, saying that he has been researching the business of foreigners traveling to China for medical services recently.
I was quite curious, wondering that this niche business has been booming for over a year, why did he, who is always quick to spot opportunities, only decide to get into it now?
Lao Lu smiled and said it is not too late at all. Recently he has connected with several international medical centers in Beijing, gradually figured out the operation logic, and is preparing to focus on providing inbound medical services for high-net-worth foreign patients.
According to Lao Lu's observation, many patients in Europe, America and other regions mainly rely on the free public medical system, which usually has extremely long waiting queues. If their condition cannot wait, patients who can afford the expenses will consider traveling overseas to pay out of pocket for faster treatment access.
Besides, some foreigners have purchased high-end global medical insurance plans. Even if they need to cover part of the costs themselves, the treatment prices in China are generally far more affordable than those in Europe and the United States.
Both groups are potential clients for Lao Lu.
In his ideal scenario, foreign patients can sign off and leave the hospital after treatment, with all expenses settled directly between the hospital and the insurance company. In this case, the international medical centers in Beijing and Shanghai are perfectly fit for this model.
Coincidentally last night, my old classmate Ms. Tan who has been settled in Christchurch, New Zealand for years, sent me a private message asking which hospitals in China now provide CAR-T therapy for foreign patients.
The reason is that her father was diagnosed with cancer and the family is looking for new treatment options. When I asked her how she knew China provides this therapy, she immediately sent me a report from a foreign media outlet.
Following the report, I learned about the experience of 25-year-old New Zealand patient Michael Walters seeking medical treatment in China, which has inspired many cancer patients in the country.
According to The Wall Street Journal, last year, shortly after Michael graduated from university and started his first full-time job, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
Michael went through several rounds of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy in Auckland, but his condition never improved. Later he compared treatment plans in the US, India and Australia, and only one hospital in Melbourne agreed to provide CAR-T therapy, with the cost as high as 600,000 US dollars.
Michael Walters received treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Shanghai
The figure was far beyond his family's financial capacity.
At the end of June this year, Michael raised most of the expenses through an online crowdfunding campaign initiated by his friends, and flew to Shanghai for the first time. A high-end private hospital there offered him a price less than half of the quote in Australia.
In mid-August, he got the result that the lymphoma in his body had been completely in remission. During his stay, Michael spent his 25th birthday in the ward, and the hospital staff sent him a birthday cake. He is already planning to spend his next birthday back in Auckland, hoping that by then he only needs to focus on his work, girlfriend and trivial daily life.
Stories of foreign patients traveling across borders to seek high-priced medical treatment keep emerging outside Shanghai.
In January this year, China Business News reported that Dr. Kevin, a Chinese physician who has been practicing in Canada for 20 years, once brought his 10-year-old daughter suffering from pancreatic tumor to Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, and completed a robot-assisted spleen-preserving surgery at a self-paid cost of about 160,000 RMB.
According to another report from Shangguan News, 3-year-old Brazilian girl Zara traveled to multiple countries for medical treatment before, and almost all the suggestions she received were amputation. Last August, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital completed an 8-hour microsurgical reconstruction for her, and she was finally able to wear two shoes of the same size after the surgery.
Public data shows that in 2025, public hospitals in Shanghai served 73,200 foreign patients. In the same period, the outpatient volume of foreign patients in Guangzhou reached 168,000 person-times, with more than 15,000 inpatient visits, and the revenue from related medical services hit 2.28 billion RMB.
Lao Lu has not received such clients yet, but as the first group of foreigners who have brought budgets of hundreds of thousands or even millions of RMB are queuing up to enter Chinese hospitals, he believes that China's high-end inbound medical industry is just beginning to show its huge potential.
02
Why are Chinese hospitals capable of serving these anxious foreign patients who are willing to pay large sums of money?
In fact, whether the money can flow into Chinese hospitals ultimately depends on whether the hospitals have the therapies that foreign patients urgently need.
Similar to Michael, the recent experience of another New Zealand patient Josh Bronkhorst has also brought hope to many overseas cancer patients who are looking for new treatment options.
Josh, 59 years old, is the CEO of a financial services firm. After being diagnosed last December, he received four months of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but the tumor was still growing. Local doctors judged that the success rate of continuing chemotherapy was only 15%.
Josh received CAR-T therapy for gastric cancer at Shanghai Jiahui International Hospital
Coincidentally in June this year, China approved the world's first CAR-T therapy for solid tumors. Josh quickly flew to Shanghai and became one of the first foreign patients to receive the treatment after approval. Ten days after the cell transfusion, his malignant ascites began to subside, and the doctor later removed his peritoneal drainage tube.
Josh's trip to China is rooted in the rapid maturity of China's domestic CAR-T industry in recent years.
CAR-T was first invented in the United States, but China has now approved 9 products, the largest number in the world. Dr. Siraj Ali Ahmed, director of the CAR-T program at MD Anderson Cancer Center in the US, once commented that China has industrialized this treatment modality.
The change brought by industrialization is that more domestic hospitals can access the products, and the waiting time for patients for cell preparation has also been greatly shortened.
Since CAR-T needs to be produced separately based on the immune cells of each individual patient, laboratories around Shanghai can complete the preparation in a relatively short period of time, so that hospitals can arrange the transfusion much faster.
The treatment price gap also emerged as the industry scales up.
At present, the cost of CAR-T treatment in China is about 150,000 to 230,000 US dollars, while that in the US reaches 550,000 to 850,000 US dollars. For ordinary families, the price in China is still close to an astronomical figure, but for wealthy patients who are already prepared to seek medical treatment across borders, they can save millions of RMB.
Chinese hospitals have thus gained a rare pricing space. Even if they charge far more than the cost of ordinary outpatient services, the final bill is still likely to be lower than similar treatments in Europe and the United States.
However, high-end international hospitals still need to improve their capabilities beyond pharmaceutical support.
Take CAR-T for example. It may cause severe inflammatory reactions, and patients sometimes need to be admitted to the intensive care unit. Complications involving the heart or nervous system also require timely intervention by specialists from other departments.
At the same time, the hospitals targeted by foreign patients must review English medical records in advance, organize remote consultations, and complete all examinations quickly after the patients arrive.
High-net-worth patients are not equal to commercial insurance clients. Many foreigners who travel to China specifically for medical treatment still need to pay out of pocket. Even if they hold international medical insurance, they still need to confirm whether the policy covers China and the corresponding therapy, and obtain authorization from the insurance company in advance.
Such a complex high-end inbound medical service makes the business model conceived by Lao Lu look very profitable.
Inbound tourism enterprises can assist patients with medical record translation and coordinate remote consultations before departure, and provide accommodation, accompanying diagnosis and rehabilitation services after arrival. Lao Lu admits that the market is large enough, but some peers have already started to enter this business, so he has accelerated his layout recently.
After all, hospitals sell treatment access, and what travel agencies can do is to safely bring overseas patients to these treatment opportunities.
03
When foreign patients who are willing to spend huge sums of money start to enter Chinese hospitals, it inevitably raises some questions.
What domestic patients are most concerned about is: will foreigners who are willing to pay higher fees get access to specialists faster and take up the already scarce hospital beds?
In response to this, Lao Lu said frankly based on his preliminary research that from the perspective of Shanghai private hospitals such as ParkwayHealth and Jiahui that are favored by foreign patients, these hospitals are mainly built with social capital, and foreign patients use the medical resources allocated by the hospitals themselves, which barely has direct conflict with the public medical system.
The situation of the international departments in public hospitals is relatively more complicated. The international departments usually have independent consultation areas and wards, and their charges are regulated by the market. But specialists still need to be scheduled from the whole hospital, and some equipment is also shared within the hospital.
But regulators have drawn clear boundaries. The National Healthcare Security Administration stipulates that the items and fees of public medical institutions that implement market-adjusted prices shall not exceed 10% of all medical services in principle. Foreign patients who come to China specifically for medical treatment usually pay out of pocket and will not use China's basic medical insurance fund.
From another perspective, the high fees paid by foreign patients can not only become incremental revenue outside China's basic medical insurance pool, but also help relevant departments accumulate experience by treating complex cases.
Another impact of the high-end medical revenue brought by foreign patients is that if domestic hospitals continue to invest in equipment, talents and add new beds, the expanded medical supply may also benefit domestic patients.
With so many favorable factors, policies have begun to tilt towards this business.
In March this year, nine government departments including the Ministry of Commerce proposed to expand inbound health consumption, build international medical tourism brands, and include Chinese medical services in the national tourism image. Shanghai has previously explicitly encouraged travel agencies to design high-end medical products and cooperate with hospitals and insurance institutions.
However, the opening of policy access does not mean that travel agencies can sell related services as long as they get a list of hospitals.
Lao Lu also admitted that traditional Chinese medicine experience programs are easy to be packaged into tourism products, but in the field of cancer and major surgeries, whether a patient can receive treatment can only be decided by the hospital based on their medical records. Travel agencies can only be responsible for pre-departure consultation, and services such as flight ticket booking, hotel arrangement, airport pickup and accompanying diagnosis before hospitalization.
To put it bluntly, customer resources are only the front end. Whether the hospital is willing to admit the patient determines whether the order can be established. After the patient returns overseas after treatment, follow-up review and complication management will span multiple countries, and the service does not end when the plane takes off.
If the patient's condition relapses, it is hard to clarify who should be held accountable among the hospital, pharmaceutical company or the agency through an ordinary tourism contract. Deviations in language translation may also lead to cross-border medical disputes.
The high unit price makes Lao Lu very tempted, but the responsibilities behind inbound medical services are far heavier than organizing foreign tourists to visit scenic spots.
Behind the millions of RMB of life-saving money from foreign patients flowing into China, whether the industry can hold this opportunity steadily tests far more than just hospitals.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "TravelLens", written by Theodore Xishao, and authorized for release by 36Kr.