Almost every standard policy excludes planned treatment abroad and its complications — here is what to buy instead, and what our own warranty covers.
Read the exclusions page before the summary page. Almost every off-the-shelf travel policy excludes planned medical treatment abroad and, critically, anything arising from it — so if a complication from your surgery sends you back into hospital, the ordinary policy does not respond. Buying travel insurance and assuming it covers your operation is the single most common mistake we see.
The policy remains worth its 30 to 60 euro for everything unrelated to the treatment: a broken ankle on wet cobbles, appendicitis, a cancelled flight, lost baggage with your medication in it, a hotel night you have to buy because a strike grounded you. Those risks do not disappear because you are here for surgery. Buy it for those, not for the operation.
A handful of specialist insurers sell medical-tourism complication policies that pay for revision surgery, an extended hospital stay, repatriation and, in some cases, the flights. Expect to pay roughly three to six per cent of the procedure cost, and expect the policy to require a licensed, accredited facility — which is precisely why the accreditation questions in your first email matter.
Our own cover is not insurance and we will not call it that. It is a written warranty, a revision policy, intensive care inside the hospital building rather than a transfer across town, and a coordinator who answers after you fly home. What it does not include is your flight, your hotel extension or your lost working days. That gap is what a complication policy exists to fill.
No. Those cards are not valid in Turkey, and even where they are valid they cover emergency state care, never planned private treatment.
We do not require it. We recommend it in writing, and we say the same thing to patients who choose another clinic.