Hamburg · Region 2 of 6 · Snapshot 26 August 2026
How hard is it to book a specialist online in Hamburg?
We surveyed all 1,778 reachable specialist profiles across seven fields on Germany's largest booking platform, then measured real appointment availability at 350 bookable practices, queried separately for public and private insurance. Hamburg shows the widest access gap of this series: 59 percent of practices showed publicly insured patients no appointment at all within 98 days, while privately insured patients could book at 83 percent, with a median wait of six days. In dermatology, 45 of 50 practices showed public patients nothing.
Finding 1
Dermatology is nearly closed, and three more fields follow
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. Four of seven fields sit above fifty percent.
Share of practices with no online GKV appointment within 98 days
Hamburg, 26 August 2026 · availability sample, 50 bookable practices per specialty
Where public booking worked, the waits were substantial: a public median of 26 days against 6 for private patients. ENT carried the deepest measurable wait of any ENT market in this series, a public median of 46 days against 2, and cardiology stood at 41 against 6.
Finding 2
In psychotherapy, three in four declared practices are private-only
The census layer covers every reachable profile, 1,778 in total. Where a profile declares its billing status, psychotherapy reaches 76 percent private-only, the highest value measured in any city of this series, ahead of Dusseldorf (73) and Cologne (72 percent). Dermatology follows at 45 percent, also a series high for that field.
Private-only share among practices with a declared billing status
Hamburg census, 26 August 2026 · 968 of 1,778 profiles declare a status
Finding 3
The 59 percent without a public slot, decomposed
Among the 350 practices in the availability sample, the public-insurance gap has two distinct mechanisms. Hamburg's profile is distinctive: outright exclusion is comparatively rare (11 percent), but practices with public booking enabled released no slot at the highest rate of the series. In psychotherapy, only one of the 38 empty public calendars was a configured exclusion.
What 350 bookable Hamburg practices offered publicly insured patients
Availability sample, 26 August 2026
172 of the 207 practices without a public slot showed an open, bookable private appointment at the same moment. Where both insurance types had a published date, 63 of the 118 directly comparable practices ran split calendars, and there the public median was 5 days longer, with single-practice gaps up to 237 days.
Finding 4
Same practice, same appointment type, up to 237 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.
Days until the next bookable first appointment, by insurance type
Largest same-practice gap per specialty, Hamburg, 26 August 2026
Finding 5
English-language care: the thinnest metro supply in the series
Across the full census, 37 percent of profiles list English as a consultation language, the lowest share of the six metropolitan regions, just under Berlin (38 percent). Orthopaedics is the exception at 64 percent. In psychotherapy, where English-speaking care matters most for internationals, supply is thin (23 percent) and 76 percent of declared practices require private cover.
Share of profiles listing English as a consultation language
Hamburg census, 26 August 2026 · all 1,778 reachable profiles
Conclusions
What these numbers mean, stated plainly
The conclusions below stay within what the data can support.
- Hamburg has the widest access gap of this series. 59 percent of sampled practices showed publicly insured patients no appointment at all, while 83 percent offered private patients one, with a median wait of six days.
- Dermatology is nearly closed to public patients online. 45 of 50 bookable practices showed them nothing, the highest single-field value of the series.
- Hamburg's gap runs through released slots more than through exclusion. Only 11 percent of practices exclude public patients outright, the lowest metro value; instead, practices with public booking enabled released no slot at the highest rate of the series. 83 percent of the practices that showed public patients nothing had an open private slot at the same moment.
- In psychotherapy, private cover is closer to a precondition than anywhere else. 76 percent of declared profiles treat private patients only, the series high, and 76 percent of bookable practices showed public patients no first session.
- For English speakers, the two gaps compound at the series' thinnest supply. 37 percent of profiles list English, the lowest metro share, and it clusters where private cover opens the door.
Method and limits
What this study measures, and what it does not
- Two layers. A census of all 1,778 reachable profiles (languages, declared billing status, online bookability; 1,878 listed, 100 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 Hamburg location includes some surrounding towns; results describe Hamburg.
- 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.
- 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 54 percent of profiles; private-only shares are reported against the declared base and labelled as such. Medians count bookable practices only; waits beyond the 98-day scan come from the platform's own next-appointment field; 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 roughly half of the directly comparable cases in Hamburg (55 of 118). Where calendars are split, the public median was 5 days longer, with single-practice gaps up to 237 days. The larger inequality is access: 59 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.
