Method
How verification works
Any directory can print a licence number. The large Mexican sites already do. What makes a number useful is knowing where it came from, when it was checked, and how to repeat the check. So that's what gets published next to every one.
Three separate things, checked separately
These get conflated constantly, including by clinics themselves, and they aren't the same claim.
1. The federal licence to practise: cédula profesional
This is the one that matters most and the one people skip. A doctor practising legally anywhere in Mexico holds a cédula profesional issued through the Secretaría de Educación Pública. It's the licence to practise medicine at all, it's a matter of public record, and it's searchable by anyone at the Registro Nacional de Profesionistas. The number is confirmed to match the name, and both it and the date of the check are published.
What it proves: this person completed a recognised medical degree and is federally licensed. What it doesn't prove: anything about a specialty.
2. Specialty board certification
A general licence doesn't make someone a bariatric surgeon, an ophthalmologist or a plastic surgeon. Specialty certification is a separate credential, and in Mexico it's a legal requirement for specialist practice under the General Health Law, articles 81 and 272 Bis.
This is the layer that's unusually strong on the medical side. Certification runs through CONACEM, the national committee of Mexican specialty boards, which publishes a public searchable directory covering 47 councils and around 120 specialties. Crucially it publishes validity dates: certificates run five years and then must be renewed. So the certificate can be looked up, its number and both dates published, and re-checked later.
Where a certificate exists, its number and both validity dates are published. Once the end date passes, the profile shows the certification as lapsed with that date, and it stops counting toward the doctor's verification level. A badge that silently outlives the certificate behind it's worse than no badge.
3. The clinic's sanitary licence
A fully licensed doctor can work somewhere that isn't licensed. Facilities are regulated separately by COFEPRIS, so this is recorded as its own line rather than folded into the doctor's credentials.
What the badges mean
Licence verified
This doctor's cédula profesional was found in the federal registry and it matches the name on the listing. The number and the date of the check are on the profile.
Board certified
A specialty council has certified this doctor, the certificate number is published, and the certificate is currently inside its validity window. This badge requires a verified licence underneath it.
Certification lapsed
A certificate exists but its end date has passed. Certifications lapse for administrative reasons as well as substantive ones, and they can be renewed, so this is information rather than an accusation. Ask about it.
Not verified
This could not be confirmed against the registry, or it hasn't been checked yet. Treat the listing as self-reported.
Check the work
None of this is worth anything if you have to take it on trust. Every profile links to the registry that the check came from, and there's a walkthrough for doing it yourself. It takes a couple of minutes. If you find something on this site that doesn't match the registry, report it and the listing gets corrected.
Questions about the method
Who does the checking?
Every check is done by hand, one doctor at a time. There's no automated feed behind this. The federal licence lookup is a public web form protected by a captcha, so it can't be scripted, which means each check is a person sitting down and doing it. At the scale this site operates that's a feature: each check produces a dated record instead of a number scraped from somewhere and trusted.
What happens if a licence can't be confirmed?
The listing says "Not verified" and stays visible. Deleting it would just mean finding that doctor through an ad with no check at all. What you get instead is an explicit statement that it could not be confirmed, and a link so you can try yourself.
Does paying change a verification result?
No, and this is the one thing the whole site depends on. Doctors pay to be listed and promoted. A licence is either confirmed against the registry or it isn't. Payment can move a doctor within a verification level, never across one, and the disclosure sits in the footer of every page.
How often is a check repeated?
A check older than 365 days is marked as due for re-check on the profile itself, so you can see the age of the information rather than assuming it's current. Specialty certifications also carry their own expiry date, and the profile shows that separately.
Is a verified licence the same as a recommendation?
No. A confirmed licence and a current certificate tell you this person is legally qualified and was evaluated by their peers. They tell you nothing about surgical volume in your specific procedure, complication rates, the quality of the facility, or whether this is the right operation for you. Those are different questions, they belong in the consultation, and this site doesn't pretend to answer them.