Almost every client asks this once the house is chosen. What happens if I get sick here.

The short answer has three parts. You go to one of the two private clinics in Las Terrenas. You need private health insurance, because as a foreign resident you cannot join the public one. And you have to read your own plan, because two people with the same insurer can have very different cover.

The rest of this explains each part.

The two private clinics in town

Both are in Las Terrenas, both run a 24 hour emergency service, and both work with the four insurers named further down.

Clínica Especializada Internacional, Calle Fabio Abreu No. 16, Villa de Las Flores, La Ceiba. Telephone 809 240 6701. Emergency care around the clock, its own laboratory, and consultations in internal medicine, paediatrics, cardiology, dentistry and diabetology. Its published imaging list is computerised axial tomography with and without contrast, 3D sonography, mammography and digital radiology. That first item, the CT scanner, matters more than the rest of the list, for reasons the section below explains.

Centro Galeno Integral, Calle Duarte 219, almost next door to Banco Popular. Telephone 809 240 6817. Emergency care around the clock as well, and consultations across a range of specialties including cardiology, neurology and orthopaedics.

Do one thing with this before you need it. Drive to whichever clinic is closer, in daylight, with your insurance card. Ask who covers emergencies overnight, ask whether your plan is on their list, and ask what they want from you at the door at three in the morning. It takes an hour and it turns a bad night into a routine one.

Where to get lab work done

Both clinics run their own laboratory, so a test ordered during a consultation is usually done on the spot. People still use the independent labs, often because they are quicker for routine work or closer to home.

Referencia is the national chain, and it has a branch in Las Terrenas on Calle Duarte, where the Sirena Market is, and another in Samaná town at Av. La Marina, Plaza Pueblo Príncipe. Both open Monday to Friday from 6am to 7pm and Saturday morning until noon, on 809 221 5545. The early opening is more useful than it looks, because a test your doctor wants done fasting has to happen before you eat.

Sireny is the private laboratory in Las Terrenas, and the other name you will hear locally.

The practical habit is simple. Keep your results. Doctors here will ask what your numbers were last year, and there is no shared record that will tell them.

Why your insurance has to be private

This is the part people get wrong, sometimes after being told otherwise by someone selling residency.

Public health cover in the Dominican Republic comes with a Dominican job. Your employer pays into the Tesorería de la Seguridad Social, the TSS, and that payment is what puts you in the plan. No Dominican payroll, no TSS, no cover. Law 87-01 did create a third route for self-employed people, where the state would cover the missing employer share, but a quarter of a century later it has still not been switched on.

So residency does not get you in. A residency permit lets you sign up in principle, and there is nothing to sign up to.

For a retiree, a remote worker or a second-home owner, the answer is a private policy. That is not a downgrade. The public plan pays a set amount towards a bill and the doctor charges the rest, with nothing capping that remainder, which is why private plans are sold here as a top-up to the public one as well as a replacement for it.

Who sells private cover

Four names cover this market. We list them in the order we would look at them, and all four are accepted at both clinics above.

Seguros Universal is where we start. It sells local plans for individuals and families, and it also sells proper international plans, GoldMed Plus and Plan Exclusivo Plus, which cover treatment outside the country rather than only inside it. If you split the year between here and somewhere else, that second kind is usually the right conversation.

MAPFRE Salud ARS sells individual and family cover with a national network, including air and ground ambulance.

ARS SeNaSa is the state-owned insurer. Its Plan Larimar is the one that says this in writing: it is offered to Dominicans and to foreigners, naturalised or holding a passport, who want to sign up independently. Anyone aged 55 or over sits a medical exam first. If you want official confirmation that a foreigner buys cover directly rather than through the TSS, that page is it.

Humano Seguros rounds out the list, with local cover and emergency cover abroad on some of its plans.

The plan matters more than the company

This is the point worth slowing down on, because it is where people get caught.

Each of these companies sells several plans, and they are not the same. “We accept Universal” from a clinic means the company is on their list. It does not tell you what your particular plan pays for, or how much of the bill lands on you. Two neighbours with the same insurer can walk out of the same clinic with very different bills.

So before you sign, get four things in writing about the specific plan you are buying.

What is covered, service by service. Emergency, hospitalisation, surgery, maternity, imaging, medicines. Ask about the CT scan by name, since that is the piece of equipment you came for.
The copayment. How much you pay at the counter each time, per consultation and per procedure.
The limits. Almost every line has an annual ceiling or a percentage, and once you pass it the rest is yours.
Whether it pays outside the country, and how. This decides what happens if you need treatment the peninsula cannot give you.

Two more questions, and then you are done. Does the clinic bill your insurer directly, or do you pay and claim it back afterwards. And what are the medical exam and pre-existing condition rules at your age, since these are underwritten policies rather than an entitlement.

What the clinics cannot do

The province has four public hospitals: Pablo A. Paulino in Las Terrenas, Leopoldo Pou in Santa Bárbara de Samaná, Alberto Gautreaux in Sánchez, and Natividad Alcalá in El Limón, which handles maternity and children. We do not recommend them, and we would rather say so than hint at it. That is our own judgement from years of taking these calls, not a published finding.

There is also a way to see the ceiling without arguing about it. The three general hospitals each publish their catalogue of services on their own government site, and under imaging all three list the same three things: electrocardiogram, radiology, sonography. None of them lists a CT scanner. That is why the one at the private clinic matters in a town this size.

The harder limit applies to everyone here, public and private. A stroke, a serious heart attack, major trauma or a cancer diagnosis is treated outside the province. Samaná sits in the Servicio Regional de Salud Cibao Nordeste, alongside Duarte, Hermanas Mirabal and María Trinidad Sánchez, and the regional hospital for that whole service is San Vicente de Paúl, in San Francisco de Macorís. Private care at that level means Santiago or Santo Domingo. Either way it is a road journey off the peninsula. This is the reason to read what your policy says about being moved, and about repatriation if you hold an international plan. Nobody reads that clause until the day it decides everything.

Emergencies

Call 9-1-1. It covers Samaná province and runs around the clock. When the service was set up here, the government listed what the province would get: Ministry of Health staff and ambulances with doctors, nurses and paramedics, National Police units across the municipalities, road assistance from Obras Públicas, and two Navy boats for anything happening on the coast, one on the Samaná side and one on the Las Terrenas side.

Know what it is not, because the government said this part plainly at the same time. It is not an ambulance service for taking people to hospital or moving them from one hospital to another. It is for emergencies and imminent risk. Transfers are arranged separately, so call your clinic as well as 9-1-1.

One more thing, learned from watching it go wrong. Know how a driver would describe your address, not how your deed describes it. Addresses out here are landmarks, not street numbers. If you are buying towards Playa Cosón or El Portillo, work out the drive to town now and write it down.

What to have in place

The clinic you would use, saved in your phone with the drive time from your gate.
9-1-1 saved, and your address written the way a driver would find it.
A private policy in force, with the coverage, copayments and limits confirmed in writing.
The answer on direct billing, and on repatriation if you hold an international plan.
A way to pay a bill on the spot if your plan reimburses instead of billing.
If you are away for part of the year, someone local with keys, written authority and your policy details, the same arrangement you need for storm season.
Moving with children? Settle the school question alongside this one, as in our guide to family life in Las Terrenas.

Before you act

This article describes the clinics, laboratories and insurers operating here, what the public hospitals publish about themselves, and how the system is built. It is not medical or insurance advice. Our view of the public hospitals is our own opinion, offered as that. None of it describes your policy or your case. Confirm your position with your insurer, with the clinic, and with a licensed advisor. Confirmed September 2026.

Most of living well here is settling questions like this one early, which is the same thread that runs through what Samaná is actually like day to day. If you are weighing a move and want a straight answer about the practicalities, our team is here year round. Reach us through our contact page.

Healthcare in Las Terrenas: Clinics, Labs and Insurance

The two private clinics in town

Where to get lab work done

Why your insurance has to be private

Who sells private cover

The plan matters more than the company

What the clinics cannot do

Emergencies

What to have in place

Before you act

Sources

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