Dusseldorf · Region 5 of 6 · Snapshot 26 August 2026
How hard is it to book a specialist online in Dusseldorf?
We surveyed all 3,119 reachable specialist profiles across seven fields on Germany's largest booking platform in the wider Dusseldorf region, then measured real appointment availability at 350 bookable practices, queried separately for public and private insurance. Dusseldorf is the best-digitised market in this series: 81 percent of all profiles offer online booking. Digitisation does not close the gap. 48 percent of practices showed publicly insured patients no appointment at all, and in cardiology, where public booking worked, the median wait was 89 days against 7 for private patients.
Finding 1
Even the best-digitised market shows public patients little
For each sampled practice we looked up the next bookable first appointment, queried separately for public (GKV) and private (PKV) insurance, scanning up to 98 days ahead. The chart shows the share of practices per specialty where the public calendar returned nothing in that entire window.
Share of practices with no online GKV appointment within 98 days
Dusseldorf region, 26 August 2026 · availability sample, 50 bookable practices per specialty
Where public booking worked, cardiology and dermatology carried the longest measurable waits of the whole series: public medians of 89 and 74 days, against 7 and 8 for private patients. One cardiology practice reported its next public appointment 552 days out, a platform-reported figure beyond our 98-day window, while private patients could come the next day.
Finding 2
In psychotherapy, three in four declared practices are private-only
The census layer covers every reachable profile, 3,119 in total. Where a profile declares its billing status, psychotherapy reaches 73 percent private-only; only Hamburg measures higher (76 percent), in any city of this series.
Private-only share among practices with a declared billing status
Dusseldorf census, 26 August 2026 · 1,797 of 3,119 profiles declare a status
Finding 3
The 48 percent without a public slot, decomposed
Among the 350 practices in the availability sample, the public-insurance gap has two distinct mechanisms, and they deserve to be read separately.
What 350 bookable Dusseldorf practices offered publicly insured patients
Availability sample, 26 August 2026
135 of the 167 practices without a public slot showed an open, bookable private appointment at the same moment. Where both insurance types had a published date, 72 of the 156 directly comparable practices ran split calendars, and there the public median was 10 days longer.
Finding 4
Same practice, same appointment type, up to 204 days apart
Where a practice runs split calendars and published dates for both insurance types, the gap becomes directly measurable. The largest gap per specialty, each comparing the identical first-appointment type at the identical practice. Dates beyond our 98-day scan come from the platform's own next-appointment field; the 552-day cardiology case is left out of the chart for scale and reported in the text above.
Days until the next bookable first appointment, by insurance type
Largest same-practice gap per specialty, Dusseldorf region, 26 August 2026
Finding 5
English-language care: the strongest supply in the series
Across the full census, 54 percent of profiles list English as a consultation language, the highest share of the six metropolitan regions, fitting the Japanese and international business community of the region. Even here, psychotherapy and ophthalmology trail.
Share of profiles listing English as a consultation language
Dusseldorf census, 26 August 2026 · all 3,119 reachable profiles
Conclusions
What these numbers mean, stated plainly
The conclusions below stay within what the data can support.
- Digitisation does not close the insurance gap. Dusseldorf has the highest online-booking coverage of the series (81 percent of profiles), and still 48 percent of bookable practices showed publicly insured patients nothing, while 81 percent of those had an open private slot at the same moment.
- Cardiology and dermatology carry the longest measurable waits of the series. Public medians of 89 and 74 days against 7 and 8 for private patients, and a platform-reported extreme of 552 days against one.
- The gap is configured, not coincidental. 18 percent of practices exclude public patients from the online first appointment outright; in psychotherapy 27 of 50, the highest count in the region.
- In psychotherapy, private cover is close to a precondition. 73 percent of declared profiles treat private patients only, in this series only surpassed by Hamburg, and 70 percent of bookable practices showed public patients no first session.
- For English speakers, supply is broad and the tilt is unchanged. 54 percent of profiles list English, the series high, but the fields with the best English supply are also those where private cover opens the door.
Method and limits
What this study measures, and what it does not
- Two layers. A census of all 3,119 reachable profiles (languages, declared billing status, online bookability; 3,259 listed, 140 unreachable), and an availability sample of 350 bookable practices, 50 per specialty, drawn evenly across all result pages to avoid the platform's availability-based ranking bias. The platform's Dusseldorf location includes surrounding towns; results describe the wider Dusseldorf region.
- Platform and insurance categories. The platform surveyed is Doctolib, Germany's largest medical booking platform. The private query corresponds to the platform's own category for privately insured patients; self-paying patients use the same channel. Both queries per practice ran immediately one after the other on the snapshot day.
- Digital access only. Public patients can still obtain appointments by phone, via their GP, or through the 116117 appointment service, which guarantees an appointment within four weeks with a referral code. The finding is precisely that the direct digital channel open to private patients is largely closed to public patients.
- No referral is legally required for any of the seven specialties studied. The comparison concerns the identical referral-free first appointment for both insurance types. The platform encodes referral requirements in structured form; none of the sampled first-appointment types carried one.
- Snapshot, not a season. Practices release slots in waves. Where booking is enabled but no slot appeared, quota policy and genuine fullness cannot be fully separated from one day of data; the open private calendars at the same practices point to quota policy. The study repeats quarterly.
- Billing status is declared by 58 percent of profiles; private-only shares are reported against the declared base and labelled as such. English listing is the practice's own declaration.
- Waits beyond the 98-day window come from the platform's own next-appointment field and are labelled as platform figures. Medians are counted across bookable practices only; shared calendars count as equal access.
Funding and conflict of interest. TheGoodBroker advises on private health insurance and may receive commission from an insurer when a policy is concluded. This study was not funded or influenced by any insurer. Method and aggregate results are published for independent review. The study measures booking availability; it makes no statement on whether private health insurance is the better choice for any individual.
Cite this study
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Licence: CC BY 4.0 (reuse with attribution and link).
The series
Six metropolitan regions, one method, one snapshot day
Each city is surveyed and published separately so that every result is citable on its own, in an English and a German edition with a city PDF in both languages. A combined report aggregates the six metropolitan regions.
Common questions
Do publicly insured patients need a referral to see these specialists?
No. Statutory patients in Germany may see dermatologists, orthopaedists, cardiologists, gynaecologists, ENT doctors, ophthalmologists and psychotherapists directly. A referral is only mandatory for fields such as radiology or laboratory medicine, none of which are part of this study. Practices may still ask for a referral as their own policy.
Does this mean public patients cannot get appointments at all?
No. The study measures the online direct-booking channel on one snapshot day. Phone, GP referral and the 116117 service remain open to public patients. What the data shows is that the convenient digital path that private patients use freely is largely unavailable to them.
Do private patients always wait less at the same practice?
No. Where a practice runs one shared calendar for both insurance types, both see identical dates, and that is the majority of directly comparable cases in Dusseldorf (84 of 156). Where calendars are split, the public median was 10 days longer, with single-practice gaps up to 204 days. The larger inequality is access: 48 percent of sampled practices showed public patients no appointment at all, while 83 percent offered private patients one.
Deciding between public and private cover in Germany?
Independent, English-speaking advice. Free means all of it.
Book a free call →TheGoodBroker · Independent insurance broker (licensed under Sec. 34d German Trade Code). This study reports measured booking availability. It is not medical advice, not an assessment of treatment quality, and no statement about individual insurers or tariffs. Data collected from publicly accessible booking pages; no personal data was gathered; practice names are withheld.
