A Guide for Cancer Patients Seeking Treatment in Beijing

Many tumor patients eventually come to Beijing to try their luck. In fact, Beijing doctors are also helpless against tumors; some Beijing physicians talk grandly, with brilliance on the surface and rubbish underneath, yet many patients come to Beijing precisely for these 'famous doctors.' I think it a pity that patients travel all the way to Beijing only to be hoodwinked here. Below I introduce, as far as I know, the Beijing hospitals and doctors with reliable results in treating cancer, hoping to help other patients.

Among Beijing's Western hospitals treating tumors, the top three are roughly the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (China's most authoritative cancer hospital), Beijing Cancer Hospital, and the 307 Hospital (the PLA Cancer Center). But comparatively, military hospitals are not as good as local hospitals, and local hospitals are not as good as the CAS-supported national hospitals.

In addition, top hospitals such as Peking Union Medical College Hospital and the Third Hospital of Peking University have physicians of very high caliber.

Among Beijing's TCM hospitals, the most authoritative is the Guang'anmen Hospital of TCM, the oncology research base of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and one of China's core hospitals for TCM tumor treatment.

Beijing Hospital of TCM and Dongzhimen Hospital are two relatively authoritative comprehensive TCM hospitals, also hiding many skilled tumor specialists. Other hospitals may have TCM oncology outpatient clinics, but honestly their level is far below these three; some doctors in those hospitals are famous only because they are good at self-promotion.

Beijing's skilled TCM tumor specialists, besides holding clinic in hospitals, are also invited to sit in at pharmacies such as the Baita Temple Pharmacy and Tongrentang; especially Miaoying Tang in the Baita Temple Pharmacy gathers a host of Beijing's top TCM oncology experts. The former Minister of Health Cui Yueli opened a TCM clinic called Pingxin Tang in the Wangfujing area, also gathering Beijing's TCM elite. Any Beijing famous doctor invited to these places is a TCM expert with reliable results.

Registering at some Beijing hospitals is hard, but there are tricks. Beijing's Grade-3 Class-A hospitals generally have an international-patient window where expert appointments are easy to get, because many people do not know that Chinese citizens can also register there. If it is hard to get an expert appointment, try registering there.

Generally, for experts at the level of Peking Union Hospital, once you get their special-needs appointment (a bit pricier), my own firsthand experience is that the experts examine patients very carefully and patiently, sometimes spending dozens of minutes on one patient. The several experts I took my family to see at Peking Union Hospital were all like this.