Munich · Region 3 of 6 · Snapshot 26 August 2026
How hard is it to book a specialist online in Munich?
We surveyed all 2,238 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. Munich gives publicly insured patients more online access than Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf or Cologne: 58 percent could book something. What it does not give them is the same calendar. Where both insurance types could book, publicly insured patients waited a median of 21 days, privately insured patients 8. In cardiology, the medians were 60 versus 9 days.
Finding 1
Where public patients get in, they wait two to six times longer
For every sampled practice we looked up the next bookable first appointment, queried separately for public (GKV) and private (PKV) insurance. This chart compares the median wait per specialty, counted only across practices where that insurance type could book at all. In cardiology, half of all bookable public appointments were more than two months out; the private median was nine days.
Median days until the next bookable first appointment, by insurance type
Munich, 26 August 2026 · medians across bookable practices per specialty, rounded to whole days
Data table (exact values)
| Specialty | GKV median (bookable n) | PKV median (bookable n) |
|---|---|---|
| Cardiology | 59.5 days (32) | 9 days (47) |
| Dermatology | 55 days (21) | 10.5 days (44) |
| Ophthalmology | 33 days (34) | 8.5 days (48) |
| Gynaecology | 33 days (25) | 14.5 days (44) |
| Orthopaedics | 14 days (35) | 7 days (45) |
| ENT | 10.5 days (40) | 6 days (50) |
| Psychotherapy | 7 days (15) | 9 days (38) |
Psychotherapy runs against the pattern: the few public first sessions that were bookable at all came quickly. The barrier there is not the wait but getting a calendar in the first place, as Finding 2 shows. At single practices the gap stretches much further than the medians: one cardiology practice listed the next public appointment 187 days out and the next private one after 8; a dermatology practice listed 195 versus 34, an ENT practice 181 versus 22.
Finding 2
Four in ten practices showed public patients nothing at all
Access comes before waiting. The chart shows the share of practices per specialty where the public calendar returned no bookable appointment within the entire 98-day window. Across all fields it is 42 percent, a smaller share than in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt or Cologne, but still four in ten.
Share of practices with no online GKV appointment within 98 days
Munich, 26 August 2026 · availability sample, 50 bookable practices per specialty
Finding 3
The 42 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 Munich practices offered publicly insured patients
Availability sample, 26 August 2026
These are not empty calendars: 125 of the 148 practices without a public slot showed an open, bookable private appointment at the same moment. And unlike Berlin, most directly comparable Munich practices run split calendars: of the 191 practices with a published date for both insurance types, 110 separate the two, and there the median public patient waited 6 days longer, with single-practice gaps of up to 187 days. Where one shared calendar serves both, dates are identical.
Finding 4
In psychotherapy, six in ten declared practices are private-only
The census layer covers every reachable profile, 2,238 in total. Where a profile declares its billing status, the share that treats private patients only varies enormously by field. Psychotherapy leads, as it does in every city of this series so far.
Private-only share among practices with a declared billing status
Munich census, 26 August 2026 · 1,201 of 2,238 profiles declare a status
Finding 5
English-language care: broader than Berlin, same private tilt
Across the full census, 42 percent of profiles list English as a consultation language, four points above Berlin. Orthopaedics and cardiology lead; ophthalmology trails. As elsewhere, English-language care clusters in exactly the fields and practices where private cover opens the door.
Share of profiles listing English as a consultation language
Munich census, 26 August 2026 · all 2,238 reachable profiles
Conclusions
What these numbers mean, stated plainly
The conclusions below stay within what the data can support.
- Munich's online booking is a private-insurance channel first. Privately insured patients could book at 90 percent of sampled practices, publicly insured patients at 58 percent, and 84 percent of the practices that showed public patients nothing had an open private slot at the same moment.
- Munich's distinctive gap is time, not only access. Where both insurance types could book, the public median was 21 days against 8. In cardiology 60 against 9, in dermatology 55 against 11. Berlin's inequality sits mostly in access; Munich adds a measured waiting-time gap on top.
- The gap is configured, not coincidental. 18 percent of practices exclude public patients from the online first appointment outright, in psychotherapy 24 of 50 sampled practices, the highest count in the city.
- In psychotherapy, private cover is close to a precondition for online access. 62 percent of declared profiles treat private patients only, and 70 percent of bookable practices showed public patients no first session within 98 days.
- For English speakers, the two gaps compound. English-language care is easier to find than in Berlin (42 percent of profiles), but it is concentrated where private cover opens the door.
Method and limits
What this study measures, and what it does not
- Two layers. A census of all 2,238 reachable profiles (languages, declared billing status, online bookability; 2,378 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.
- 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 54 percent of profiles; private-only shares are reported against the declared base and labelled as such. English listing is the practice's own declaration.
- Medians are counted across bookable practices only and rounded to whole days in charts; the data tables carry exact values. Waits beyond the 98-day scan come from the platform's own next-appointment field. Where calendars are shared between insurance types, both patients see identical dates; single-calendar practices are counted as offering 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 only partly available to them, and slower where it is.
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. In Munich, however, most directly comparable practices run split calendars (110 of 191), and there the public median was 6 days longer, with single-practice gaps up to 187 days. The larger inequality is access: 42 percent of sampled practices showed public patients no appointment at all, while 90 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.
