Medical records for treatment in China: before you go and before you leave

Before you go, ask what the hospital needs

International offices take questions from abroad by email, phone or web form. Jiahui International Hospital in Shanghai, for example, gives a fee estimate through its contact form and offers a teleconsultation before you arrive (Jiahui Health). Beijing's medical guide lists email booking for the international department of Peking University People's Hospital (Beijing government medical guide, Oct 2025).

What a hospital can tell you before it sees you differs. Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou says it cannot give a treatment plan before you arrive in China (Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center). Ask the hospital what it wants to see, such as recent reports, scans or a list of your medicines, and in which language, and send them to the hospital, not to us.

Guangzhou's International Medical Tourism Service Center, opened in April 2026 with the city's 17 pilot hospitals, says it offers remote pre-consultation before arrival (Yicai Global, Apr 2026; China Daily, May 2026). We found no public contact for it yet.

You have a right to copies of your records

China's Regulation on the Prevention and Handling of Medical Disputes gives patients the right to see and copy their records. The list includes outpatient records, the admission record, doctors' orders, test reports, imaging, consent forms, surgery and anaesthesia records, pathology, nursing records and the bill (State Council, Aug 2018, Art. 16; Guangde government). The hospital must provide copies and stamp them, you or a close relative must be there when they are copied, and the hospital may charge a cost fee whose rate is published.

China's personal information law also gives you the right to see and copy the personal information an organisation holds about you (Personal Information Protection Law, Art. 45; CMS, Sep 2021).

Hospitals must keep outpatient records for at least 15 years and inpatient records for at least 30 years (Implementing Rules of the Regulations on Administration of Medical Institutions, Art. 53; Shenzhen government, Jun 2025). Ask for your copies before you fly, at the hospital's records office, with your passport.

Reports in English are not guaranteed

The UK government warns that when you are discharged you may be given a medical report in Chinese (UK government, Apr 2025). Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center says it issues medical documents only in Chinese and does not translate them. Ask before you book whether the hospital issues the discharge summary, test reports and invoice in English, and whether translation costs extra. The UK government's guide points to its list of translators and interpreters in China.

Ask for scans you can keep

China's national pricing guidance from November 2024 builds digital processing, upload and cloud storage into the price of a scan, and hospitals that cannot store images in the cloud have to charge less (Yicai, Nov 2024; The Paper, Dec 2025). The national imaging cloud is built for people in China's medical insurance (The Paper, Dec 2025), and we found no source on whether visitors who pay for themselves can use it.

Ask for the images as files or on a disc as well as the written report, and check that any link opens outside China.

At home

Take everything to your own doctor. The aftercare guide has the checklist of what to ask for before you leave. Ward & Way is not affiliated with any hospital named on this page.