The honest version of what a treatment day looks like, the hour you leave home, the lane at the border, the floor your suite is on, who hands you what, how you get back. Written so you can plan it yourself, or hand the page to someone who's planning it for you.
A standard treatment day for an IV longevity infusion. Joint and neurologic days run longer because of imaging, a procedure room, and a 90-minute observation window; your coordinator sends a tailored itinerary the week prior.
Light breakfast if your protocol permits, the coordinator confirms the day before. No cash needed at any point.
You cross on foot in the PedWest lane, passports out, about eight minutes. The driver meets you on the Mexican side.
Private entrance on Paseo de los Héroes; no waiting room. Intake is done in your suite.
Nurse + physician both present. You meet the pharmacist who will reconstitute your dose downstairs.
Runs approximately 45 minutes. You're reclined, connected to a continuous monitor; a physician is on the floor the entire time.
Lunch arrives, a real plate, not crackers. Your coordinator reviews aftercare with you and your companion.
Printed chart note, lab values, medication list, and the coordinator's mobile number. Driver pulls up.
The letter of medical necessity routes you through the Ready Lane; typical wait 12 – 20 minutes.
We ask for a short video check-in at 48 hours, and a brief call at 7 days. Everything else is on your schedule.
We don't hide that it's Mexico. We also don't make it feel like Mexico, the parts that matter to you (the driver, the lane, the letter, the return) are handled. Here's exactly how.
We publish typical times because "it varies" is the dodge that wastes a day. These are actual medians from the last 12 months of patient travel, not marketing estimates.
Everything on this page, printed in the order you'll use it. Border paperwork checklists. A map with the medical lane marked. The coordinator's direct line. The Hospital Angeles address in both languages. What to pack, and what not to.
Most cell therapy in Mexico is delivered out of small, standalone clinics, some excellent, most not. Celva Bio operates inside Hospital Angeles Tijuana: a 116-bed JCI-accredited private hospital, part of Angeles Health, one of Mexico's largest private hospital networks. Your suite is on Level 4. If anything clinical happens, anything, the ICU is on Level 2 and the ER is on Level 1. That is the entire argument.
We don't design for Instagram. Each room is picked for a job, the intake happens where intake should happen, the infusion happens where you can be safely monitored, and the lab is its own sealed environment upstairs. You'll likely only see two of these in person.
Eight suites on our floor. Recliner & a companion chair, en-suite bath, a window that actually opens, continuous patient monitor at the bedside, oxygen and suction wall-ports. The infusion runs here; so does the 90-minute observation after.
Articulated C-arm table, GE LOGIQ ultrasound, fluoroscopy when indicated. Intra-articular and epidural placements happen here under imaging, not "landmark-guided" in a recliner. The orthopedic physician stays in the room for the full procedure.
Only the processing team enters this room. It is a clean suite with laminar-flow biosafety cabinets, certified incubators, and a chain-of-custody tracking system that logs each vial from thaw to bedside. The door is 20 steps from your suite; we can walk you past it.
You meet each of them by name. Each has a specific job, a specific time-window, and a specific thing they'll ask you. No one is "the assistant" or "the guy from upstairs." If anything comes up after you go home, two of them are on your phone.
Your primary point of contact from the first call. Books hotel, driver, pre-visit labs; runs the day; stays on your phone afterward.
Meets you · 07:00 & on phone thereafter
Same driver both legs of the day. Car seats four, bottled water, phone charger. Knows the lanes, knows the letter.
Meets you · 07:00 lobby
Takes your vitals, places the IV, stays on the floor for the full infusion and the observation window that follows it.
Meets you · 09:00 · suite
Final pre-treatment review. Ordered your protocol, signs off on the dose, stays in the building during infusion.
Meets you · 09:15 · suite
Reconstitutes your dose the morning of. Stops by to confirm the lot, the count, and the release certificate with you.
Meets you · 09:45 · brief
If your plan includes an image-guided joint injection or a neuro evaluation, a second physician is in the room for that portion.
Meets you · by track
You don't chase us for results. The same person reviews your labs at 30 and 90 days and sends a written summary to you and your physician.
First call · 48h post-discharge
You will almost certainly not meet them. They are the reason we operate inside a hospital and not a standalone clinic.
On reserve · 24 / 7All of it at once, so you don't have to. If your question isn't here, ask your coordinator, they keep a living list and will add it.
Composed from the first three questions every patient asks on an intake call. If your real question is "should I even be doing this," start on Proof or the evaluation page.
The Zona Urbana Río corridor, where Hospital Angeles sits, is a business and medical district that looks and feels like San Diego's Mission Valley. Your day is a lobby, a lane, a private hospital floor, and a lane home. You are never on your own on the street, and you never leave the hospital grounds between arrival and discharge.
We've been doing this every week since 2009. If we thought any part of the corridor was unsafe, we'd say so, we cancel treatment days when border security advisories shift, and refund in full.
There is a crash cart on our floor, a code team two floors down, a Level-III ICU on Level 2, and an attending anesthesiologist in the building 24/7. Reactions to allogeneic MSC infusions are rare (we publish our rate on the Proof page); the vast majority are minor and resolve with a pause and an antihistamine. Anything beyond that is handled by the hospital in which you are standing, not by an ambulance to an unfamiliar ER.
Two major differences. First: dose. Most MSC products that are legal to market in the U.S. are in vials of a few hundred thousand cells; they are largely unproven at that concentration. Our typical allogeneic infusion delivers 100 – 300 million cells, which is the concentration at which every major published trial has been run. Second: regulation. We operate under COFEPRIS. Mexico's federal regulator, which has a specific, licensed pathway for cultured allogeneic MSC therapy. The U.S. does not have an approved pathway for most of what we do; so "it's easier" in the U.S. is not the same as "it's legal."
Some do, some don't, it depends largely on whether they've seen a peer-reviewed MSC trial recently. We publish our protocols, our lot release data, our adverse event rate, and we will talk to your physician directly on request. Most PCPs who've reviewed our materials end up fine with it. A minority remain unconvinced; that's their right, and we respect it.
One companion is welcomed in the suite for the full day; additional family can wait in the hospital's private guest lounge on Level 4. Translators are unnecessary, all clinical staff on our floor are bilingual, but we've had patients bring one anyway for their own comfort, which is fine.
Full refund until 14 days before your treatment date. Inside 14 days, the second deposit becomes a credit toward a rescheduled date within the following 12 months. Inside 48 hours, it converts to a 50 % credit, because by that point the dose is on order and the lab is slotted. We don't charge cancellation fees for medical-necessity changes.
Book a consult, we'll walk through the travel details for your specific situation, confirm fit with one of our physicians, and only then send an itinerary. No day is scheduled until the clinical plan is written.