How a clinic earns its place on our lists
How Clinic Shortlist chooses the clinics on each list and their order, what paid plans change and the questions to ask before treatment in the UAE.
Someone after a Hollywood smile, a parent looking for a children’s dentist and a man booking laser hair removal for his back need different clinics. So every list on Clinic Shortlist begins with what the reader came for, and four questions settle who is on it and where.
Is this treatment its real work?
First we look at what each clinic does day to day. Out go hair and beauty salons and spas without doctors, pharmacies, dental laboratories, cosmetics shops and medical tourism agencies, along with hospitals and polyclinics where dentistry or dermatology is just one department. Groups that run several branches stay in. Within each list, clinics whose own work is the subject of the list, such as an aesthetic clinic with doctors, a dental clinic or a specialist orthodontist, sit above those for which the treatment is a sideline.
Some pages draw a tighter line. HydraFacial and Morpheus8 pages include only clinics that own the device. Invisalign pages include only clinics that provide it. Hair transplant lists are limited to clinics that operate themselves, so agents who arrange surgery elsewhere stay off them.
A reputation that holds up
Then comes what patients have said in public about each clinic, which anyone can look up and judge. We weigh it against the clinic’s track record, so that a few enthusiastic comments about a new clinic do not count as much as years of consistent ones.
What it shows before you visit
We also read each clinic’s website and official channels. Are its doctors named, together with what they are licensed as? Does it say which devices and products it uses, publish prices, say whether VAT is on top, and explain how consultations and aftercare work? Clinics that answer these questions in public give you firmer ground for comparing.
Independence
The order of each list is our editorial call, based on merit and revisited from time to time. No clinic pays to be on a list, and payment cannot shift the criteria. Clinics that have already been selected can buy Pro, which adds contact buttons, photos and their doctors to the clinic page, or Top, one of the first three places on a list. Either one is always labelled.
Before your appointment
Get the name and licence number of whoever will treat you and look them up with the regulator for that emirate. Ask which product or device they will use, the total price including VAT, what aftercare comes with it and whom to call if something goes wrong. To report a mistake on our pages, use the contact page.