How we check facts
Choosing where to be treated is a serious decision. These are the rules every page on this site follows.
Rule 1
Accreditation comes from the accrediting body, never the hospital
We read MSQH accreditation from MSQH’s own national register, with the dates it gives. JCI and ACHS are added only once confirmed on those bodies’ own registers. A hospital’s website saying it is accredited is not enough.
Rule 2
Ownership comes from the owner’s own record
Who owns a private or non-profit hospital is taken from the group’s own published pages or a regulatory filing, never from a directory or a news summary. Government hospitals are the ones the Penang State Health Department, part of the Ministry of Health, lists as its own hospitals on its website.
Rule 3
Every fact shows its source and date
On each hospital and clinic page, next to each fact, you will see where it came from and when. Facts about government hospitals and clinics come from the Penang State Government’s open data, published under a Creative Commons licence. Facts about private hospitals and clinics are checked by us on their own websites, and we link the page we read. If we have no source for something, we do not show it.
Rule 4
Old public records are checked against current ones before we use them
The state’s list of government clinics is free to reuse, but many entries date from 2013 or 2014. Before listing a clinic we confirm it still appears as open on the Ministry of Health’s current facility list. Clinics the Ministry now lists differently, or not at all, are held back until we can check them. A clinic goes on the map only where the two lists agree on its location.
Rule 5
Nobody can pay to change a fact or a comparison
Hospitals and clinics will be able to pay for extra visibility, such as a place at the top of a list, and every paid place will be labelled “Sponsored”. Paid places never appear inside a comparison table, and payment never changes a fact, an accreditation or an ownership record.
Rule 6
We do not publish reviews or ratings
We stick to facts that can be checked. We do not rank hospitals by quality or publish star ratings.