Editorial Standards

This page describes how articles on LymyVoyage actually get made, end to end. Nothing here is aspirational -- it's the real process.

LymyVoyage is an independent medical-tourism research and information publication. We aggregate, verify, compare, and summarize publicly available information from multiple sources. We do not diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or provide individualized medical advice.

1. How topics get found

We start from a broad topic (e.g. "medical traveling") and research, via live web search, how it's actually discussed and broken down -- destinations, costs, clinics, and so on. That breakdown is re-checked periodically rather than fixed once and reused, so it reflects what's currently being written about, not a static list.

2. How specific article candidates get found

Within each area, we search for concrete, timely, sourced stories -- a specific price change, a specific market report, a specific policy shift -- not generic restatements of what's already been written elsewhere. Every candidate is logged with the source URL(s) that surfaced it and a written rationale for why it's worth covering.

3. Human review before anything gets written

Every candidate is reviewed by a person and explicitly accepted or rejected before any article is drafted. Nothing gets composed on the strength of automated discovery alone.

4. Human review before anything gets published

Article drafts are checked for accuracy and edited before publication. Our internal tooling will not publish a draft that hasn't been marked as reviewed by a named person -- it's an enforced step, not an honor system.

5. Source hierarchy

Not every source carries the same weight. When an article's central statistic matters, we say which tier it comes from:

Tier 1 -- Primary / official

Government agencies, regulators, official hospital data, academic publications, professional associations. The strongest evidence we cite.

Tier 2 -- Institutional

Major hospital systems, accredited organizations, established research bodies.

Tier 3 -- Industry

Clinics, providers, travel agencies, and industry reports -- useful, but commercially motivated, so treated as a claim by an interested party rather than independent confirmation.

Tier 4 -- Secondary

News coverage, blogs, aggregators, and social media -- used mainly to find a story, not as the final source for a figure.

6. Fact, estimate, claim, and conclusion

When a number isn't cleanly settled across sources, we label it rather than presenting it as flat fact:

• Supported -- Corroborated by an independent second source.
• Approximate -- Based on a single reasonable source, or a range across sources that agree in direction but not in exact figure.
• Not substantiated -- A widely repeated claim we could not verify against a primary source -- we say so rather than repeating it as settled.
• Disputed -- Sources materially disagree, and the disagreement itself is reported in the article rather than resolved by picking a side.

7. Translations

Articles are also published in LymyVoyage's other languages. A translation doesn't get a separate fact-check: it's produced directly from the same already-reviewed English or Russian version, and the facts, figures, and sources are identical to that reviewed version -- only the prose changes.

8. Sources

Articles that make factual claims link to the sources those claims came from, listed at the bottom of the article. If we can't find a reliable source for a specific figure, we say so rather than presenting an invented number as fact.

9. What this site does not do

This is a research and information publication, not a medical authority. We don't diagnose conditions, prescribe treatment, or assess whether a specific procedure or clinic is medically appropriate for any individual reader -- that requires a qualified clinician who knows your actual situation, which we are not and don't claim to be.

10. Corrections

When we get a fact wrong, we correct the article and add a dated note saying what changed -- we don't silently edit errors away. Corrections (we misstated something that was knowable at the time) are labeled separately from updates (newer data replaced a figure that was accurate when the article was reviewed), because they say different things about the reporting.

If you spot an error, email contact@lymyvoyage.com with the article and what's wrong -- we'll check it and correct it if it's off.

For what to include in a report, what happens after you send one, and how to dispute a finding about your organization, see Corrections and complaints.

11. Funding and independence

LymyVoyage is funded entirely by its editor's own money. We accept no donations, sell no advertising, publish no sponsored content, and receive no commissions, referral fees, or any other payment from clinics, hospitals, insurers, or medical-travel facilitators. No person or organization we write about has any financial relationship with this site.

We also don't accept free or discounted treatments, travel, or accommodation from anyone we might cover. If that ever changes in an individual case, it will be disclosed on the affected article -- but the working rule is simply not to take it.