We didn't set out to be the cheapest.We set out to be the one you can trust.

It started with two kinds of phone calls.

When we opened in 2014, most of the people calling us had already tried the obvious paths.

The first kind had done everything right. They'd talked to their doctor, they qualified, they'd read about the surgery — and then they'd run into the wall most Americans hit: a price in the tens of thousands, months of insurance requirements, and often a no at the end of it. A gastric sleeve — a 45-minute laparoscopic procedure — had somehow become out of reach for the people who needed it most.

The second kind had already discovered that bariatric surgery in Mexico was within reach, and they were asking exactly the right questions. Who is my surgeon, and how do I know? Who checks the hospital? Why would I send a deposit before anyone has looked at my chart? Who takes care of me after I fly home?

Those are the right questions, and we loved hearing them. The surgery itself is one of the most effective treatments in medicine. What a careful patient needed was a system around it they could see and trust. So we set out to build that system, piece by piece, and we started by writing down the things we would do differently.

We took the deposit off the table.

Most programs ask for a deposit. We decided early that we never would. A deposit asks you to commit before anyone has earned it — and we never want money to be the reason someone goes ahead on a day they'd rather pause. So we don't take one. Not a small one, not a "refundable" one, not for a premium date. Your surgery date is reserved on your word.

We're told this is an unusual way to run a business. It is. It's also the simplest way to make sure the only reason a patient is on our table is that they want to be there — and it's why our hotels, transportation and surgical approval are free, too.

We put complication cover in every package.

With experienced, high-volume surgeons, complications are rare. A serious program still plans for every scenario, so in 2018 we became one of the first centers in Mexico to build a real complication policy into every package. Not an upsell, not a checkbox. If something needs attention in the covered window, your treatment is taken care of — and you can focus on getting better.

The details, limits and what's covered are on the complication insurance page. We'd rather you read them than take our word for it.

We went into the hospitals and built the credentials.

Mexico has superb surgeons and hospitals. What a patient in Ohio or Alberta can't easily do from home is verify that for themselves — so we made the verification part of how we work. We went into the hospitals ourselves and built the credentialing program from the inside, the way a U.S. hospital would expect it to exist.

• Every medical professional who touches a Pompeii patient — surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse, nutritionist — holds the proper degree, the proper training and current certification, and we have seen the documentation ourselves.
• Every department has oversight — surgery, anesthesia, nursing, pharmacy, sterile processing — with someone accountable for it.
• The standard is the U.S. standard. Same anesthesia protocols, same monitoring, same equipment, same nursing ratios. The price difference is the system around the care, never the care.

Our surgeons perform three to five of these procedures every day. That volume isn't a marketing line; it's one of the strongest predictors of a safe outcome, and it's why surgical approval with us is free and real: a surgeon looks at your case, not a form.

We built our own financing.

The biggest problem in medical tourism isn't medical at all. It's that the people who need this surgery most are often the ones who can't write a check for it — and traditional lenders rarely finance a procedure in another country. For years that single gap decided who got care and who didn't.

So we built the financing ourselves. Same-day approval. A soft credit pull that doesn't ding your score. $0 down for many patients, with the first payment about thirty days after surgery — and we publish the real terms by credit tier, so you know your number before you apply. It's all on the financing page.

We rebuilt the company to own every step.

Then we did the thing that changed everything: we decided no part of your journey would be handed off to someone else. The driver who meets you at the San Diego airport, the border crossing, every hotel night, the pre-op testing day, the hospital, the recovery, the ride back to your flight — all Pompeii. One team, one phone number, one person who knows where you are at every hour you're with us. Here's what the trip looks like.

Owning the journey is also why we developed our own hospital: Mount Vesuvius Bariatric Hospital in Tijuana, about forty minutes from the airport. The point was never the building itself. It was the hundred small decisions you only get to make when the building is yours — how close the nurse sits to the beds, an in-house pharmacy so nobody leaves for medication, numbered patient rooms on one quiet corridor, a lobby that doesn't feel like a clinic to the family waiting in it.

Late in 2025 we began the next chapter: a partnership with Hospital Bellas Artes, a facility many of our patients already knew. We wanted more room to do this well — a larger facility and surgical structure under the Pompeii name, reconstructive surgery under the same roof so the transformation doesn't stop at weight loss, and a structure that keeps prices fair for the families we serve for years to come. Everything Mount Vesuvius taught us came with us, including the credentialing and the standards. We wrote an open letter about it, and you can tour the hospital here.

We will tell you no.

A center that never says no isn't a medical practice. If you're not a candidate, we'll tell you. If a different procedure fits you better than the one you asked for, we'll tell you — even when it's the less expensive one. And on the rare occasion your pre-op testing here shows that surgery isn't the right call for you, you get a full refund and a straight explanation, and we'll help you figure out what is. A surgeon makes that call, not a salesperson.

Aftercare isn't a feature. It's the product.

Here's what we've learned from thirty thousand patients: surgery is one day, and the transformation is the year that follows. New habits, new portions, the plateau nearly everyone meets somewhere around month three. Many programs have said goodbye by then. We've always believed that's when the job actually starts.

So we stay. Your coordinator is still your coordinator years later. Our private community is tens of thousands of patients, many of them five and ten years out, answering the questions they once asked. We built PostOpDiet.com so you have a nutritionist-grade answer at midnight instead of a forum guess. There's no expiry date on any of it. You're family.

And yes, we build software.

Somewhere along the way we became as much a technology company as a surgical one. Most centers buy their software; we write ours — the platform our coordinators and patients run on, the post-op app, and a set of calculators we give away free to anyone, patient of ours or not. The hardest questions — how much will I lose, how many days off do I need, what does the shot really cost over five years, can I even qualify — shouldn't require a sales call to get an honest answer.

They're all at pompeiisurgical.com/calculators. No signup, nothing stored, the whole answer on the page.

What we're building next.

Twelve years in, we're still building. Financing with even lower down payments for the people who need it most. Reconstructive surgery as a natural next chapter of the same journey. More room for charitable and pro-bono procedures as the new structure allows. And every one of those will arrive the way the deposit rule did: quietly, permanently, and on the patient's side.

If you've read this far, you're deciding whether to trust us with something that matters enormously. You don't have to take our word for any of it — read what the patients before you have said, run your own numbers, and then call. A real coordinator will pick up. That part hasn't changed since 2014.