Chengdu Third People’s Hospital

Chengdu Third People's Hospital is one of Sichuan's most respected teaching hospitals, with a lineage that traces directly to the prestigious National Central University School of Medicine. Founded in 1941, it was the first hospital in Chengdu's municipal system to achieve Grade A tertiary accreditation and remains consistently ranked as the top municipal hospital in the city and among the top 15 municipal hospitals nationwide.

History and Scale: The hospital's origins are extraordinary by any measure: it was founded as the teaching hospital of Nanjing National Central University's medical school, which had relocated to Chengdu during wartime. Its founding director, Dr. Qi Shounan, was a Johns Hopkins-trained cardiologist and one of the co-inventors of clinical electrocardiography. In 1954, the original institution was divided into two — one half became today's Chengdu Third People's Hospital, the other became Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital. The hospital now occupies 138 mu (9.2 hectares) in Qingyang District, with 2,200 open beds, over 3,700 staff (including 255 PhDs and 962 master's degree holders), and an annual throughput of 2.21 million outpatient visits and 111,200 inpatient discharges.

Star Specialties: The hospital holds two National Key Clinical Specialty construction projects: Cardiovascular Medicine and Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine. Its Cardiology Department — fitting for a hospital founded by an ECG pioneer — operates national-grade chest pain, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure centers, performing complex coronary interventions, structural heart procedures, and electrophysiology studies at volumes rivaling many provincial-level hospitals. The Respiratory Department, strengthened by a Zhong Nanshan Academician Workstation established in 2018, is a leader in interventional pulmonology and complex lung disease diagnosis. Additional provincial-level key specialties include Ophthalmology, Gastroenterology, Neurology, Anesthesiology, General Surgery, Nephrology, and Critical Care Medicine. The hospital's Orthopedics Department has earned particular renown for its severe spinal deformity correction program, which handles cases referred from across Western China.

Achievements and Recognition: The hospital is one of Sichuan's nine designated Regional Medical Centers (holding designations for cardiovascular, respiratory, and cancer), a status achieved in 2014. Its CMI and performance metrics consistently rank first among all Chengdu municipal hospitals. In the national municipal hospital competitiveness rankings, it has placed 14th nationwide for five consecutive years. The hospital runs five dedicated research institutes covering cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, respiratory health, oncology, and digestive diseases, and hosts 24 municipal-level medical quality control centers — more than any other hospital in the city.

International Services: The hospital's International Medical Service Department, located in its main outpatient building, provides English-capable care coordination, VIP outpatient pathways, and international insurance direct billing for select carriers. While its international patient volume is smaller than that of Sichuan University's West China Hospital across town, the hospital's quality-to-accessibility ratio is attractive — wait times are shorter and the specialist depth, particularly in cardiology, orthopedics, and respiratory medicine, is genuinely world-class.

Why Choose Chengdu Third People's Hospital: For international patients seeking elite-level cardiology or respiratory care outside the often-overwhelming volumes of China's top-10 academic hospitals, this institution offers a compelling alternative: a century-deep academic lineage, Johns Hopkins-trained founding leadership DNA, nationally competitive outcomes, and Chengdu's more relaxed pace and lower costs. Its spinal deformity program in particular draws patients from across Asia for complex reconstructions that few centers worldwide perform at comparable volume.