a hospital · Costa RicaHospital Clínica Bíblica

A private hospital in central San José, on Avenida 14, founded in 1929 by Henry and Susan Strachan of the Latin American Mission and now the largest private hospital in Costa Rica. It is one of the two San José hospitals an American or Canadian patient is routed to, and it is the older of them by seventy years.

The Strachans built a mission clinic. What grew on the site is a general hospital that sells surgery to North Americans four hours' flight from Miami, and the mission name survived the change of purpose intact.

The hospital states ninety-six years of operation and leads its own front page with recognitions rather than with capacity: the Joint Commission International gold seal, a MERCO ranking, an Intellat listing among Latin American hospitals for 2025, an América Economía ranking, a Newsweek rating. Inference — a hospital that puts five listings above the fold and no bed count below it is selling reassurance to a buyer who cannot inspect the building.

It publishes no price. The Spanish site carries a page headed Presupuestos — estimates — which is a request form covering surgery, imaging, pharmacy and maternity, and prints no figure on any of them. The one number on the public site is an emergency insurance plan from 16,500 colones.

Costa Rica's own answer to that gap is PROMED, the national council run out of the Cámara Costarricense de la Salud, which certifies providers for international patients. It is a membership scheme with a seal, not a price register.

Trade practice — the Costa Rican route runs through the hospital's international desk or through a facilitator in the patient's own country: records by email, a surgeon's opinion, a written estimate, a deposit, and a recovery stay in San José or Escazú before the flight home. Dental and bariatric work carries the shortest chain and the largest share of the traffic.

What the hospital publishes is what it is accredited by and what it is ranked by. What it does not publish is what any of it costs.

As of 17 September 2026 the hospital states ninety-six years of operation and holds the Joint Commission International gold seal, with no year given for the first award on the page read here. Reported bed counts range from 96 to 250 across secondary sources and none is stated on the hospital's own site; the figure is left empty here rather than picked.