Public clinics and private centers: a rating gap of one and a half points

The median rating of Kazakhstan's city polyclinics is 3.20. For private medical centers it is 4.70. That is a gap of one and a half points, while almost all other categories in our directory sit tightly between 4.4 and 4.9

By city

In Petropavlovsk polyclinics hold a median of 1.80, below two. In Almaty and Shymkent it is higher, 3.60 and 3.70, but even there the gap with private centers is more than a point

Who has more reviews: polyclinics or centers?

There are six times fewer polyclinics, but each has twice as many reviews. For the largest ones the count runs into thousands: one Almaty polyclinic has 6,344 reviews

What this means for our other articles

We have written many times: you cannot choose by rating, because for salons, studios, and practices almost everything is stuck near five. This table shows the other side of the same observation: people rate perfectly well. A rating stops telling businesses apart when the experiences are alike, and it tells them apart sharply when the experience is truly different

We have a separate analysis of why ratings do not work in beauty: ratings tell nothing apart

What do these numbers not say?

A person comes to a polyclinic by assignment and to a private center by choice and for money. These are different people in a different mood, and the comparison of ratings does not account for that. Our data shows the gap but does not explain how much of it is the quality of care and how much is the queue, the appointment slip, and the price of the question

We count ratings the way visitors of the directory gave them, and we do not recalculate them in our own way

What this means for you

1. If you are choosing between a polyclinic and a private center, the rating gap is real and large: from one point to two and a half, depending on the city
2. Polyclinics have twice as many reviews, and their ratings are spread across the scale. So there is something to judge by
3. Among the cities in our table the gap is largest in Petropavlovsk, Kyzylorda, and Kostanay, and smallest in Almaty and Shymkent

Where the numbers come from

The open 2GIS directory, August 2026. City polyclinics were businesses with the word "polyclinic" in the name or in the description of activity: 494 listings with a rating. Private medical centers were those that describe themselves as a medical center or a clinic: 3,012 listings with a rating. We used the median instead of the average: one listing with six thousand reviews should not outweigh a hundred ordinary ones. The city table shows cities with at least fifteen of each