How we evaluate clinics
Every clinic entry is assessed on independently verifiable criteria — facts stated in public registries or in the clinic's own published materials. We do not rank physicians by surgical outcomes; no directory can do that honestly. Four of our criteria come directly from the patient guidance of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery. Every claim carries a source and the date we checked it.
The eight criteria
| Criterion | Weight | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Who performs the surgery | Highest | This is the question the ISHRS puts first. Its position is that preoperative evaluation, surgical planning, donor harvesting, hairline design and recipient site creation should be performed by a licensed physician or physician extender. In practice clinics vary widely, and most patients never ask. |
| ABHRS board certification | Highest | ABHRS certification is specific to hair restoration and verifiable in a public registry. A surgeon can be an excellent plastic surgeon or dermatologist without holding it — that is not a disqualification, but it is a fact worth knowing, and it is checkable in two minutes rather than taken on trust. |
| ISHRS membership | High | Membership in the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery signals participation in the specialty’s standards-setting body — and the member directory is public, so the claim can be checked in one click rather than read off a logo. |
| Who evaluates your hair loss | High | Hair loss has causes that require diagnosis — androgenetic alopecia, telogen effluvium, scarring alopecias and systemic conditions present differently and respond differently. The ISHRS warns that non-physician evaluation risks misdiagnosis, failure to identify hair disorders or underlying disease, and unnecessary procedures. A consultation that is really a sales appointment is a different thing from a medical evaluation. |
| Price transparency | Medium | Whether the clinic publishes per-graft rates or total ranges anywhere. Published figures are rare, correlate with consistent pricing, and are the only way a patient can calibrate a quote before a sales conversation. |
| Malpractice coverage of the full team | Medium | The fourth of the four ISHRS patient questions. If part of the procedure is performed by someone not covered, the patient carries a risk they were never told about. |
| Verifiable results | Medium | Before-and-after photographs should depict the clinic’s own patients, treated by the surgeon who would treat you. The ISHRS lists fraudulent photography among the markers of black-market operations. |
| Named in AI answers | Editorial | Whether the clinic appears when patients ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews who to trust in its city. Tracked with dated screenshots, measured separately from quality, and never part of the evaluation itself. |
What “Not stated” means
“Not stated” records that the clinic's own published materials did not state the fact as of our check date. It is not a negative finding: many excellent practices simply do not list credentials on their pages. It becomes meaningful in aggregate — a market where no one states anything is a market where patients cannot verify anything, and that is worth knowing before a consultation.
Warning signs we track
Drawn from the ISHRS consumer campaign against black-market operations:
| Red flag | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| One flat price to harvest “as many grafts as possible” | Graft count should follow from diagnosis, not from a package. The ISHRS lists this inversion among predatory-pricing patterns. |
| The advertised surgeon is not the one in the room | The ISHRS calls this the “token doctor” pattern — a physician fronts the marketing while technicians perform substantial parts of the surgery. |
| Several patients treated simultaneously in one room | Assembly-line operation — the model that makes unlicensed-technician surgery economically attractive. |
| No one will say who makes the incisions | The first ISHRS patient question exists because delegation of surgery to unlicensed staff is the campaign’s central warning. A practice with nothing to hide answers by name. |
| Before-and-after photos that are not the clinic’s own patients | Fraudulent photography is an ISHRS-listed black-market marker. Results you are shown should be results this surgeon produced. |
| Diagnosis by a salesperson instead of a physician | Hair loss has medical causes that present differently. A consultation that is really a sales appointment risks misdiagnosis and unnecessary surgery. |
Featured placements
Clinics may pay for a featured position on a city page. Featured placements are always labelled as such, are limited to one per city, and do not affect the comparison table, the evaluation criteria, or eligibility to be listed. Listing itself is free and cannot be bought or removed by payment.
AI-visibility measurements
We track whether clinics appear when patients ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews who to trust in each city. Measurements are taken as dated screenshots on a weekly cadence and reported separately from the evaluation — visibility in AI answers is a fact about marketing reach, not about surgical quality, and we treat it as such.
Corrections
If any information about your clinic is inaccurate or out of date, write to hello@hairrestorationreport.com — corrections are made the same day, any day of the week. Entries state what your own materials state; update your materials and we will update the entry.