an organization · Costa RicaPROMED

Costa Rica's membership body for providers serving international patients, now run within the Cámara Costarricense de la Salud, the country's health chamber. Its members include hospitals, medical and dental clinics and spas, and affiliated businesses — recovery retreats, hotels, transport, travel facilitators, insurers, law firms, marketing agencies and consultants. It issues a Seal of Quality to members.

PROMED is a trade association, not a regulator, and the membership list shows it: a law firm and a hotel sit in the same scheme as a hospital. That mix is the point of a destination promotion body and it is also the reason its seal answers a different question from an accreditation.

Inference — a seal issued by a body whose members pay it, to members who are also its constituency, is a membership badge with conditions attached. It may carry real entry requirements. It is not an external inspection of a clinical service, and a reader who takes it as one has substituted one kind of evidence for another.

Costa Rica's clinical licensing sits elsewhere, with the Ministry of Health and the professional colleges, and a dentist practising in San José is licensed by a body that has nothing to do with this council.

A provider joins, pays dues, and meets the scheme's terms to carry the Seal of Quality. The chamber runs a directory of members. The pages read for this record do not state the founding year, the dues, the seal's criteria or its renewal interval.

As of 16 September 2026 promedcostarica.org redirects to the Cámara Costarricense de la Salud, which describes PROMED's membership categories and the Seal of Quality on its English page.