Hospitals in Hanoi

Hanoi holds the deepest concentration of medical expertise in Vietnam, and it is arranged in three tiers that barely resemble one another. At the bottom by price and the top by specialist depth are the great public hospitals — Bach Mai, the largest in the country, and Viet Duc, the national surgical and trauma centre — which are extraordinarily cheap, extraordinarily busy, and run entirely in Vietnamese. In the middle sit Vietnamese private hospitals such as Hong Ngoc and Thu Cuc, calmer and a few times dearer. At the top are two international hospitals, Hanoi French Hospital and Vinmec Times City, where the doctors work in English and the paperwork is built for insurers, at ten to twenty times the public price.

This page lists all six with the practical detail: what kind of hospital it is, where it is, how to call it and how to find it on a map. Every name opens a full page on that hospital. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026; numbers change, so if one fails, call 115.

The 6 at a glance

Bed counts are approximate. Tap a name for the full page.

The hospitals

Which hospital should I go to?

For a serious illness with insurance, go to Hanoi French Hospital in Dong Da or Vinmec Times City in Hai Ba Trung — the only two hospitals in the capital built around foreign patients. For a road accident or anything needing urgent surgery, Viet Duc at 40 Trang Thi is the national trauma hospital and is minutes from the Old Quarter. Seriously ill with no insurance and no money? Bach Mai has the country’s best specialists at public prices. For something in between — a fever, an infection, a wound — Hong Ngoc near Truc Bach Lake and Thu Cuc on West Lake are private, calm and mid-priced. In a life-or-death emergency, call 115.

What will it cost?

The gap between the tiers is wider in Vietnam than almost anywhere. A consultation, blood tests and medicine at Bach Mai or Viet Duc cost a small fraction of a night in a mid-range hotel, and even an admission is affordable by Western standards; foreigners pay the full listed public fee rather than the subsidised one, and it is still very little. Hong Ngoc and Thu Cuc charge several times that for the same outpatient visit and expect a deposit on admission. Hanoi French Hospital and Vinmec are priced like Western private hospitals: with insurance they are worth it, without it a serious admission runs into thousands of dollars. Ask for a written estimate before any procedure, at any of the six.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

The two international hospitals deal with travel insurers routinely and can bill some of them directly, but only where a guarantee of payment has been arranged in advance — phone the assistance number on your policy before you go if there is time, because it can also name the hospital it prefers and open the claim. Everywhere else, and for almost all outpatient visits, it is pay-and-claim, usually settled at the cashier before you leave. Carry your passport, your policy number and a card that works abroad. After a motorbike accident, also take the rental agreement and your licence: most insurers refuse a scooter claim from a rider who held no valid licence for the machine. Always ask for an itemised receipt and an English-language medical report before discharge.

Getting there and ambulances

The national ambulance number is 115. It is free to call, the crew takes you to the nearest appropriate hospital, and for an uninsured patient that will be a public one. Hanoi’s ambulance cover is thinner than a Western city’s and the traffic is unforgiving, so for anything that can wait ten minutes a Grab or Xanh SM car is often faster than waiting; never put someone with a head or spinal injury on the back of a motorbike. Note that Hanoi rewrote its addresses in 2025 when the city dropped its district tier: hospital websites now print a ward and the city, while drivers, maps and older listings still use the district names on this page. Give the street number and the hospital name and you will be understood.

Evacuation, and when you leave Vietnam

Hanoi can treat almost everything, but the region’s deepest intensive care and most specialised trauma and cancer surgery are in Bangkok and Singapore — Bangkok is under two hours from Noi Bai by air, Singapore a little over three. That short distance is the reason evacuation cover is the single thing travellers to Vietnam underbuy: an air ambulance or a medical escort on a commercial flight costs tens of thousands of dollars, and no hospital arranges one on credit. Buy a policy that covers medical evacuation and repatriation, carry the assistance number where someone else can find it, and understand that the decision to move you is made by that insurer’s doctors in consultation with the treating hospital — not by you, and not on the day. If a transfer is being discussed, ask for the imaging on a disc as well as the written report.

Pharmacies

For a cold, a stomach upset, a rash or a hangover you do not need a hospital. Vietnamese pharmacies are everywhere, sell most everyday medicines over the counter, and are cheap; the established chains such as Long Chau and Pharmacity are the safer choice, because labelling is in Vietnamese and quality varies at the smaller independents. Take a photograph of the packet of anything you take regularly, since brand names differ. Two things a pharmacy cannot settle: a fever lasting more than two days, which needs a blood test because dengue is present in the city as well as the countryside, and any wound from a road accident, which needs cleaning properly and a tetanus check.

Hanoi travel guide / Hanoi hotels / Hanoi tourist map / Vietnam visa guide / Vietnam destinations / Hospitals in Vietnam / All hospitals

Travel information, not medical advice.

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