What private care costs in Tbilisi
Outpatient prices are low by European standards and the spread between clinics is narrower than you would expect. A GP consultation runs roughly 40 to 90 GEL. A specialist consultation sits around 70 to 220 GEL. A standard blood panel is roughly 55 to 110 GEL and an MRI roughly 220 to 400 GEL. The accredited hospitals and the expat-facing practices price at the top of those bands or above, and that premium buys the consultation happening in English without a translator in the room.
Inpatient care is where the numbers stop being casual. A surgical admission with an intensive care night attached moves into thousands of lari, and that is the bill insurance exists for. Local plans are commonly quoted around 130 to 270 GEL a month. Every figure here is a band, not a quote.
How to choose
Start from what you actually need this year, not from the hospital with the biggest lobby.
Routine outpatient care
Pick on convenience and language. Any of these networks will handle a chest infection, a skin check or a sprained wrist. What decides it is whether the doctor can explain the result to you directly.
A condition you are managing
Pick continuity. You want the same specialist each time, a chart somebody reads before you walk in, and a laboratory running the same assay so your numbers are comparable. A single-site clinic often beats a large network here.
Something serious
Pick the hospital, not the clinic. Look for an accredited multi-profile hospital with an intensive care unit, a 24-hour emergency department and the specialty already in the building rather than reachable by referral.
Red flags
- No written price before the procedure. Ask for line items, including anaesthesia and bed nights.
- A quote that moves once your insurer is named. That is a pricing policy, not a coincidence.
- Reception speaks English, the doctor does not, and nobody mentions it until you are already in the room.
- The full diagnostic panel pushed on a first visit when you came in with one symptom.
- No named doctor. If you are booked with a clinic rather than a person, you cannot check the person.
- Records you cannot take away. Ask for imaging on disc or USB and lab results as PDF, and ask before you pay.
When you do not need to pay for this
For a straight blood test, walk into a standalone laboratory. Chains like Synevo and Megalab take walk-ins and cost a fraction of the same panel bundled into a hospital visit. For a repeat of a medication you already take, a pharmacy consultation is often enough, and many drugs that need a prescription elsewhere do not here.
In an emergency, stop optimising and call 112. The ambulance goes to a facility that can treat you. Billing is a problem for next week.
The money that is genuinely well spent: a full check-up when you first arrive so somebody has your baseline, a named family doctor if you have children, and insurance with evacuation cover if you spend time outside Tbilisi. Complex surgery is its own decision, and plenty of long-term residents still fly to Istanbul or Germany for it.
If you are still sorting out status and cover, our guide to getting a Georgian residence permit covers the paperwork that sits underneath all of this.
