Online Doctor Consultation · Health blog

Health & Wellness1 August 202617 min

Can't Find an English Doctor in Germany? Here's the Fix

Medically reviewed by the Online Doctor Consultation Medical Team · Last updated 8 August 2026

Priya has been on the phone since two minutes past eight. She moved to Frankfurt in September for a job in logistics, she has her Anmeldebestätigung, her Krankenkasse card arrived in the post a fortnight ago, and she has a cough that has now lasted eleven days. The first practice she rang put her on hold and then told her, in German, that they were not taking new patients. The second had an answering machine that only accepts calls between eight and eleven. The third offered her a slot on a Tuesday seven weeks out. By ten o'clock she had worked through every number a colleague had scribbled on a Post-it, and she still did not have a doctor.

If any of that sounds familiar, the problem is not you. Germany runs a genuinely strong health system, and it also runs on a set of structures and habits that are unusually hard to enter from the outside. Nothing about the system is designed to exclude foreigners, but almost everything about it assumes you already know how it works, that you can hold a phone conversation in German at speed, and that you have a Hausarzt. Newcomers rarely have any of the three. This guide explains the machinery honestly, then explains where an English speaking online doctor in Germany actually helps and where it genuinely does not.

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The Hausarzt is the door, and the door is crowded

German primary care revolves around the Hausarzt, the family doctor who runs a small independent Praxis, usually with two or three staff at the front desk and a practice software system that has not changed its interface since about 2011. The Hausarzt is where you go for a cough, a rash, a blood pressure check, a repeat prescription, a sick note, and the referral, the Überweisung, that gets you in front of a specialist. Some Krankenkassen run a Hausarztmodell that formalises this gatekeeping in exchange for small perks. Even outside those models, the cultural expectation is the same: you have a doctor, and that doctor knows you.

Which is lovely if you have lived in the same district for fifteen years. It is much less lovely if you landed at Tegel's replacement in August. Registering with a Hausarzt is not a bureaucratic step with a form and a confirmation letter; it is simply the practice agreeing to see you. Many practices in cities are effectively full and say so, sometimes politely, sometimes with a printed sheet taped inside the glass door. There is no waiting list you can join. There is no central register that assigns you somewhere. You call, and you keep calling.

The scarcity is worst in exactly the places internationals live: Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin, where the ratio of patients to accepting practices is tightest and where English-speaking practices are treated by expat forums as semi-mythical objects, passed around in Slack channels like concert tickets. A practice that advertises English often fills up within months of doing so. If you're weighing this route against a remote option before you commit hours to phone calls, our comparison of private online doctors versus public healthcare wait times lays out the trade-offs plainly.

What 116117 is, and why more people should use it

Germany has a national number that most newcomers never hear about: 116117. It is the ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst, the medical on-call service run by the Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen, and it does two separate jobs. Outside practice opening hours, in the evenings, at weekends and on public holidays, it connects you to the on-call service that covers non-emergency medical problems, sometimes by phone advice, sometimes by directing you to a Bereitschaftspraxis attached to a hospital, occasionally by sending a doctor to you. During the day it also operates the Terminservicestelle, which can help arrange appointments, including with specialists, within defined timeframes when you have an urgent referral.

Two things worth knowing before you call. First, 116117 is not the emergency number; that is 112, and the difference matters enormously. Second, the service operates primarily in German. Some regional call centres can manage English, many cannot reliably, and a call about chest tightness is not the moment to be assembling vocabulary. That single fact, more than any other, is why internationals end up in the Notaufnahme with problems that never needed a hospital.

A short detour into the Praxisgebühr, because people still ask

Between 2004 and the end of 2012, patients in the statutory system paid a Praxisgebühr of ten euros per quarter on their first doctor visit in that quarter. It was abolished at the start of 2013 and does not exist any more. It survives in the folk memory of the internet, in old forum posts and outdated relocation guides, which is why new arrivals still turn up at a Praxis with a ten euro note ready. You do not pay it. What you may still pay in the statutory system are prescription co-payments at the pharmacy and charges for services classed as IGeL, individual health services that the Krankenkasse does not cover. Those are real and current. The Praxisgebühr is history.

Insurance, Anmeldung, and the order things happen in

Health insurance in Germany is compulsory, and for most employees it means membership of a gesetzliche Krankenkasse such as TK, AOK, Barmer or DAK, with contributions deducted from salary and shared with the employer. Higher earners, civil servants and many self-employed people can instead take private cover, the private Krankenversicherung, which works on a reimbursement model: you receive an invoice, you pay it or forward it, and the insurer settles according to your policy.

The sequencing trips people up. You typically need an address registration, the Anmeldung at the Bürgeramt, before a great deal else functions, and you often need proof of health insurance before a residence permit is issued. Meanwhile your Gesundheitskarte, the chip card every practice asks for, can take weeks to arrive. There is a real window, sometimes lasting a month or more, in which you are legally insured, practically uninsurable at the front desk, and entirely capable of getting ill. Students, freelancers waiting on Künstlersozialkasse decisions and people between contracts can spend even longer in that gap.

During that window, a private consultation you pay for yourself is often the only care that is actually available to you within a useful timeframe — a gap covered in more depth in our guide to a private online doctor in Germany when you don't yet have full cover. That is not a marketing claim; it is arithmetic about calendars.

Where an English speaking online doctor in Germany fits

A remote consultation with a licensed European physician who speaks your language solves a narrow but very common set of problems: you need clinical judgement quickly, in English, about something that does not require anyone to touch you. A persistent cough that you cannot tell is viral or bacterial. A urinary tract infection starting on a Friday afternoon. A skin change you have been photographing for a week. Anxiety that has stopped you sleeping. A medication you take routinely at home and cannot work out how to continue here. Travel health questions before a trip. A second opinion on advice you half-understood because it was delivered at speed in German.

Online Doctor Consultation works across Europe with licensed and registered physicians, with active markets in Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Italy and remote video access for patients elsewhere on the continent, Germany included. This sits inside a wider European health network — sister platforms Online Doctor Consultation and DoctorCareOnline run the same model of scheduled, physician-led video care in other markets, if you split your time across borders. The scheduling model is the part internationals tend to appreciate most: you choose a specific time in the calendar, and the doctor is there at that time. You are not sitting in a virtual queue refreshing a browser tab while your lunch break disappears. If you have ever waited three hours in a Bereitschaftspraxis on a Sunday, the difference is not subtle. The range of what can be handled remotely is set out across the full list of consultation services, from general practice to dermatology, mental health, women's health and paediatrics — and if you want to see who is actually on the other end of the call, the doctors page lists the licensed physicians behind the service.

Comparing your realistic options in Germany

Route	Realistic wait	Language in practice	Best suited to	Main limitation
Hausarzt Praxis (registered patient)	Days for acute slots, weeks for routine	German, English only if the practice advertises it	Ongoing care, referrals, statutory sick notes, chronic conditions	Getting accepted as a new patient in a city is the hard part
116117 on-call service	Same day, evenings and weekends	Mainly German	Urgent but non-emergency problems outside opening hours	Language barrier, unpredictable waiting times at Bereitschaftspraxen
Hospital Notaufnahme	Immediate for true emergencies, long otherwise	Usually some English available	Emergencies only	Wrong setting for minor illness, and you will be triaged accordingly
Private English-speaking Praxis	Often faster, sometimes still weeks	English by design	People with private cover or willing to self-pay in person	Scarce, concentrated in a few districts, cost varies
International online doctor	Same-day slots may be available depending on clinician availability; you pick the time	English and other languages	Assessment, advice, triage, follow-up, mental health, second opinions	No physical exam, no German statutory eAU, no imaging or bloods

Two situations, worked through

The following scenarios are illustrative, not accounts of real patients.

Marco, Stuttgart, second week in the country. He wakes with burning on urination and a low fever. His Gesundheitskarte has not arrived. It is Saturday. He books a video consultation for 11:30 that morning, describes the symptoms, answers questions about back pain and fever that help rule out kidney involvement, and receives a clear clinical assessment plus written guidance on what would make this urgent. The doctor explains what treatment is usually appropriate, what to ask for at a German pharmacy, and the specific warning signs that mean going to a Notaufnahme rather than waiting. Marco still has to obtain any prescription medicine through a route valid in Germany, which the doctor explains rather than glossing over. What he got in twenty minutes was orientation, and orientation is most of what newcomers are missing.

Aisha, Düsseldorf, eight months in. She has been managing hypothyroidism for years and takes a daily thyroid hormone. Her home supply runs out in three weeks. She has no Hausarzt. She books an evening consultation, brings her previous test results and current dose, and gets a documented summary of her history, an explanation of how thyroid monitoring is usually handled under the German system, and a written note she can hand to whichever Praxis eventually takes her. The bloodwork itself has to happen locally, because no video call draws blood. Where an existing prescription simply needs continuity rather than a fresh diagnosis, a straightforward prescription renewal consultation is often the quickest way to bridge the gap while she finds a local practice. The value was in turning a vague problem into a specific, sequenced plan.

Prescriptions, the E-Rezept, and being straight about it

Germany has moved to the E-Rezept, the electronic prescription linked to your insurance card or an app, and it is now the standard route for statutory patients. It is a national system tied to German-registered prescribers and German pharmacy infrastructure. A doctor consulting from another European country is not plugged into it. Under EU rules on cross-border healthcare, prescriptions issued in one member state are meant to be recognised in another when they carry the required details, but in daily practice a German Apotheke may or may not dispense against a foreign prescription, and pharmacists have discretion. Anyone who promises you a guaranteed German pharmacy pick-up from an international video call is overselling.

What a remote consultation reliably gives you is clinical assessment, a documented record, advice on over-the-counter options genuinely available in German pharmacies, and a clear statement of what needs a local prescriber. Treat prescription continuity as something to plan for rather than assume. The frequently asked questions page sets out how prescribing is handled by country, which is worth reading before you book rather than after. For a broader look at how cross-border prescribing and insurance interact across the EU, our sister guide on EU health insurance and cross-border telemedicine is a useful companion read.

Sick notes: read this before you need one

German employers deal in the Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung, and since the shift to the eAU the certificate travels electronically from a German practice to your Krankenkasse, with your employer retrieving it from there. That chain is built entirely inside the German system. A physician licensed elsewhere in Europe cannot inject a document into it.

What an international online doctor can provide is a private medical certificate or consultation report describing the assessment and the recommended period of rest — similar in principle to how a certificato medico online works in other European markets, where a documented remote assessment supports, but does not replace, a locally issued certificate. Some employers accept such documentation, particularly for short absences, for travel-related illness or when you were physically outside Germany. Others accept only the eAU, and are entitled to. If you are employed in Germany, ask your HR department what they require before you are ill, not while you are lying on the sofa with a fever trying to translate a policy PDF. Our related guide on Krankschreibung online ohne Versicherung and the wider country-by-country sick certificate rules for Europe go into this in more depth.

Honest limitations of a video consultation

No physical examination. No listening to your chest, no palpating your abdomen, no examining an eardrum or a swollen joint.
No blood tests, swabs, urine cultures, ECGs, X-rays or scans. If your problem needs data from your body, you need a local service.
No controlled medicines, and no remote management of conditions that require monitored or supervised treatment.
No emergency care of any kind. A video call cannot resuscitate anybody.
No German statutory documents: no eAU, no Überweisung to a German Facharzt, no E-Rezept.
Limited value where continuity with local records really matters, such as complex multi-drug regimes.

Those boundaries are not fine print to skim. They are the difference between remote care being useful and remote care being a delay dressed up as convenience. For a wider, provider-neutral look at how these trade-offs compare with sitting in a waiting room, see our piece on online doctor consultation benefits compared with in-person visits. The clinicians behind this service are described on the doctors page, and the way the service is structured is explained on the about us page for anyone who wants to check before booking.

Red flags: stop reading and get emergency help

Call 112 anywhere in Germany, and anywhere in the European Union, for a medical emergency. Call it without hesitating for any of the following.

Chest pain or pressure, particularly with sweating, nausea, breathlessness or pain spreading to the arm, jaw or back.
Sudden weakness or numbness on one side, a drooping face, slurred or lost speech, sudden confusion or a sudden severe headache unlike any before.
Serious difficulty breathing, blue lips, or the inability to speak a full sentence.
Heavy bleeding that will not stop, or a serious injury after a fall or accident.
A seizure, fainting with a head injury, or any period of unconsciousness.
A stiff neck with fever and a rash that does not fade under pressure, or a child who is floppy, unresponsive or very hard to rouse.
Any thought of harming yourself or someone else, or a mental health crisis that feels unsafe.

For problems that are urgent but not emergencies, especially in the evening, at a weekend or on a public holiday, call 116117. If you need medicine outside pharmacy hours, every region publishes an Apotheken-Notdienst rota showing which pharmacy is on duty overnight; it is displayed in the window of any closed pharmacy and available online for your postcode.

Practical things that make German healthcare easier

Keep a photograph of your Gesundheitskarte on your phone. Learn six words that carry most front-desk conversations: Termin, Überweisung, Rezept, Krankschreibung, Notfall, and akut, since saying that a problem is akut is what gets you into the same-day slots most practices hold back. Write your medication list in both languages, with the active ingredient rather than the brand name, because German brand names differ from British, Spanish or Indian ones. Ask practices directly whether they accept new patients rather than asking for an appointment first; it saves everyone time.

And if you move within Europe, or split your year between countries, remember that arrangements differ enormously across borders. If a chunk of your year is spent in Spain, our network covers that ground too — from remote healthcare help when you don't speak Spanish to city-specific guides like English-speaking doctors on the Costa Blanca and telemedicine for expats in Spain. For countries where we do not hold a local prescribing route, the wider Online Doctor Consultation network publishes general health information, including European resource pages and Spanish-language material. Those are reference sites rather than a clinical service, and useful in that spirit.

Data protection, briefly

Any legitimate telemedicine provider operating with European patients works under the GDPR, which sets out how health data, a special category of personal data, must be handled, stored and shared. Ask where records are held, who can access them, and how you obtain a copy. Germans, reasonably, take this seriously; you should too. A provider that cannot answer those questions clearly is not one to hand a medical history to. Our privacy policy and full policies page set out exactly how this works for this service.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see an English speaking online doctor in Germany if I do not have a Hausarzt yet?

Yes. A remote consultation with a licensed European physician does not require you to be registered with a German practice or to hold a Gesundheitskarte. It is one of the few clinical routes genuinely open to you in the first weeks after arrival. It does not replace the Hausarzt for the things only a German practice can do, so keep calling practices in parallel.

Will my gesetzliche Krankenkasse reimburse an international online consultation?

Generally no. Statutory cover pays for care delivered inside the German system by contracted providers. An international private consultation is normally self-paid, which is why transparent pricing matters. Standard consultations start from around 39 euros, and shorter or follow-up appointments from 35 euros. See current pricing on the offers and packages page. Private insurers and employer health benefits sometimes reimburse against an invoice, so keep the receipt and ask.

How do I actually find a doctor who speaks English near me?

Try the Arztsuche run by the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung in your federal state, which lets you filter by language spoken. Embassies and consulates keep lists of English-speaking physicians. Large employers with international staff often have an internal list. Expat community groups in your city are usually the fastest source, though the recommendations spread quickly and those practices fill up.

Can an online doctor issue a Krankschreibung my German employer will accept?

An international physician cannot issue the electronic eAU that flows to your Krankenkasse. They can issue a private medical certificate documenting the consultation and the advised rest period. Whether your employer accepts it depends on the employer and the contract. Check your company policy in advance.

What is the difference between 112 and 116117?

112 is the emergency number for life-threatening situations across the EU, and it reaches ambulances and the fire service. 116117 is the on-call medical service for problems that need attention but are not emergencies, particularly outside practice hours. Using 116117 correctly keeps emergency departments free for people who genuinely need them.

Do I still pay the ten euro Praxisgebühr?

No. It was abolished at the end of 2012. If a website tells you otherwise, that website has not been updated in over a decade. You may still pay prescription co-payments at the pharmacy and out-of-pocket charges for IGeL services.

Can I use an online doctor for my child?

Remote consultations can help with assessment, advice and deciding whether an in-person visit is needed, and paediatric consultations are part of the service range — see how this works in practice in our note on online paediatric consultations. Any infant under three months with a fever, any child who is unusually drowsy, breathing hard or refusing fluids, and any non-blanching rash needs to be seen in person immediately. Do not use a video call to decide those.

Is a video consultation private?

It should be conducted on an encrypted platform under GDPR rules, with a physician bound by professional confidentiality obligations equivalent to those in a consulting room. Take the call somewhere you can speak freely, which in a shared Berlin flat sometimes means sitting in the car.

Medical disclaimer

This article is general information about healthcare access in Germany and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It cannot account for your individual medical history or circumstances. Always consult a qualified physician about your own health, and seek emergency help immediately if your symptoms are severe or worsening. Administrative rules, insurance arrangements and digital health systems change, so confirm current requirements with your Krankenkasse, your employer or the relevant German authority.

Patient stories and examples in this article are illustrative composites, not real patients. Medically reviewed by the Online Doctor Consultation Medical Team.

Where to go from here

Keep calling Hausarzt practices, because having one eventually makes everything in Germany simpler. Save 116117 in your phone next to 112 so you never have to think about which to use. And when something needs a doctor's judgement this week rather than in seven weeks, in a language you think clearly in, a scheduled video consultation is a reasonable bridge rather than a replacement. You can pick an appointment time that fits your working day through the main booking page, read further country guides in the health blog, or ask a specific question about your situation through the contact page before committing to anything. Being new somewhere is hard enough without also being unwell and unheard.

Continue reading

More from our European health network

This guide is part of a wider set of resources on remote healthcare across Europe, published across our family of sites:

Online Doctor Consultation Across Europe — DoctorCareOnline
Médico Online in Spain — DoctorCareOnline
Videoconsulta Guide for Spain — DoctorCareOnline
Book an Online Doctor Appointment in the UK — Online Doctor Consultation
Online Doctor Support for OCD in Spain — Online Doctor Consultation
Online Anxiety Assessment in Spain — Online Doctor Consultation

Further background reading and network overviews: Digital Healthcare Across Europe, Healthcare Wherever You Are, and our SlideShare decks on online healthcare and doctor consultations across Europe and telemedicine and digital consultations in Europe.

Browse every guide in the Online Doctor Consultation blog, or book a video visit at a time that suits you on onlinedoctorconsultation.site.

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