Frequently asked questions

No — and we are careful to say so on every page. Epidaurus is an independent reference that compares countries on the private medical services available to foreigners. We assess cost, quality, legality, accreditation and access against a published scale. We never examine a patient, never see your history, and never tell you what to do. Use a finding to weigh your options and to interrogate the clinic and the surgeon you are actually considering.

No. We take no payment from any provider, and no provider can pay to raise a score, soften a finding, or be listed. The work is reader-funded — that is the whole point. If a provider ever becomes a sponsor or advertiser, we will state it in the footer of every page it touches and wall it off from the editorial pipeline.

Honestly: not a named clinician sitting in judgement. Each report is researched and assessed by the Epidaurus editorial pipeline against our published scale, from dated public sources, then reviewed by an editor. We deliberately do not imply that a particular surgeon graded a particular country. What stands behind a score is the scale and the citations — both of which you can read and check.

You shouldn’t have to. Every score ships with its justification — the reasoning behind the verdict — free, before you pay anything. The longer report adds the full analysis and the numbered citations, but the verdict and its rationale are never hidden behind the paywall. If the reasoning doesn’t convince you, don’t buy the report.

A single report covers one country on one factor — say, IVF success rates in Türkiye. Free, with no account: the 1–5 score, its band word, the justification, the finding’s standfirst, and a faded preview of the real text. Paid: the full Detailed Analysis, every inline citation resolved to a numbered source, the hanging-indent bibliography, and the Medical-Tourism Implications section.

Most readers are deciding one thing, so most readers buy one report — or the lifetime pass if they expect to keep checking. Category passes and memberships exist for people comparing widely, but we don’t push them as forever-subscriptions, and there is no auto-renew trap. Buy the smallest thing that answers your question.

No. The whole verdict layer — scores, justifications, the map, the rankings, the methodology, the scale, and a full sample report — is open without an account. An account exists only so you can keep purchased reports and save a shortlist (your Dossier). You can read and decide first, and make an account when you actually buy.

If a report is not what the preview promised — wrong scope, broken sources, a factual error we can’t stand behind — write to us within 30 days and we refund it, no argument. We can’t refund a report simply because the verdict wasn’t the answer you hoped for; the score is shown honestly before you pay precisely so there are no surprises after.

No. There is no metering, no exit-intent pop-up, no countdown, no “3 articles left”. The only commercial ask is a quiet paywall on the one thing you walked up to — the full evidence of a single report. Trust compounds; asks deplete. We would rather you came back than felt cornered.

It does, and a stale score is a dangerous one. Every report carries a freshness stamp — the date it was last assessed and the dates of its sources. We re-assess a factor when the evidence shifts or on a rolling schedule, whichever comes first. If a report is older than we are comfortable with, we flag it on the report itself rather than letting it sit silently.

Each country–factor pair is researched from dated public sources, written up as a cited report, and then scored against a published 1–5 scale with worked examples for every band. Higher is always better. The scale is versioned and public, so you can see exactly what a “4” is supposed to mean before you trust one.

That’s the product. A full report sets every claim as a numbered, dated citation that resolves to a real reference — title, publisher, year, URL — in a hanging-indent bibliography, with a running Sources tally. If we can’t source a claim, we don’t make it. The sample report shows the apparatus working end to end before you pay.

Because we haven’t assessed it yet, and we won’t pretend otherwise. An unscored factor is shown under a diagonal hatch as Not assessed — never as a zero, never as a grey “poor”. We also suppress a country’s category average when too few factors are scored to be honest about it. A gap you can see is part of the credential.

We assess 19 destinations across 112 factors in 8 specialties, and we are open about which of those are published versus still in preparation — the sitemap shows it country by country. We do not cover emergency care, insurance-funded treatment in your home country, or providers we cannot source. If your decision sits outside the matrix, this is the wrong tool, and we’d rather tell you than sell you a thin answer.

No. We are a research publication, not a facilitator or an agency. We don’t book procedures, take a commission, or hand your details to a provider. What we give you is the comparison and the evidence; the arrangements — and the medical decision — stay between you and the clinicians you choose.

Tell us, with the report and the detail. We publish corrections rather than quietly editing, and a well-sourced challenge can change a score. The contact desk routes editorial corrections straight to the editors, and we read every one.