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THE TREATMENT REGISTRY
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Cost methodology

Every cost figure on the registry is a structured record, not a sentence. Records carry an asOfdate, a list of items included and excluded, and one or more references into the registry’s source list.

What we collect

  • Country-band ranges per procedure (low–high in the local currency).
  • Clinic-specific ranges where the clinic publishes prices on its own website.
  • An explicit includes and excludes list per record (e.g. “includes consultation, implant, anaesthetist, first follow-up” · “excludes lab work, medications, accommodation”).
  • An asOf date — when we observed the price.
  • A sourceSlugs array referencing the registry-wide source list.

What we accept as a source

  • The clinic’s own published price list (URL + date archived to the Wayback Machine).
  • An itemised written quotation provided to a registry editor or to a patient who has consented to share it.
  • An accredited industry survey with disclosed methodology (Patients Beyond Borders, IMTJ, country medical-tourism authority).

We do notaccept facilitator-quoted figures, single patient testimonials without supporting documentation, or aggregator sites that don’t disclose where their numbers come from.

Currency conversion

The registry stores prices in the currency they were quoted in, plus a USD equivalent for cross-country comparison. USD-equivalent conversion uses the build-time exchange rates fetched from open.er-api.com (a free, unauthenticated FX source). The rates file at src/content/exchange-rates.json records the fetch date. Absolute precision is not the goal of comparison views; one-decimal-place country-band rounding is acceptable.

Date limits we accept

Records older than 24 months are flagged stale and excluded from aggregate comparison views. Individual records are kept (with the stale flag) for historical reference. Editorial cycles re-collect on a 12-month cadence.

Price-transparency score

Each clinic carries a 0–100 score derived from whether it publishes prices, itemises includes/excludes, and updates the figures within 12 months. The score is displayed on the clinic detail card. It is a transparency measure, not a quality measure: a clinic can publish incomplete pricing and still receive a low score.