What USHAŞ health-tourism authorization actually means
Since 26 April 2025, Turkey requires every health facility and every intermediary agency serving international patients to hold a state-issued authorization certificate — hospitals from the Ministry of Health, agencies from USHAŞ. It also introduced two hard deadlines: mandatory complication insurance by 31 December 2025, and accreditation (TÜSKA for hospitals/clinics, or a Ministry certificate for other facilities) by 31 December 2026.
The regulation, in plain language
The Regulation on International Health Tourism and the Health of the Tourist(Resmî Gazete No. 32882, 26 April 2025) replaced Turkey’s 2017 rules. It splits authorization by who’s applying:
- Health facilities (hospitals, clinics) apply to the Ministry of Health for their authorization certificate.
- Intermediary agencies (the companies that coordinate between patients and hospitals — the category OncologyIstanbul itself would fall into) apply to USHAŞ, the state health-tourism agency.
Anyone already holding an authorization certificate before the new rules took effect had until 26 October 2025 to bring their paperwork into compliance with the new regulation, or risk having the certificate cancelled.
The two deadlines that matter
Complication insurance. Any facility performing surgical or interventional procedures in an operating-room setting must carry complication insurance covering those procedures.
Accreditation. Hospitals, medical centers, medical laboratories and dialysis centers must hold TÜSKA (Turkish Healthcare Quality and Accreditation Institute) accreditation; other health-tourism facility types must hold a Ministry-issued certificate instead.
This deadline is itself a reason authorization status is worth re-checking periodically, not treating as permanent — see the dataset history on /authorized.
What authorization does not mean
Authorization is a fact about paperwork and process compliance — it is not a quality ranking, and it does not certify clinical outcomes. A provider being authorized means it has met the state’s administrative requirements to serve international patients; it is a floor, not a ceiling. This is exactly why we never rank authorized providers against each other — see the positive-only authorization mirror and the step-by-step verification guide.