Out of hours doctor in Germany: how 116117 and the Bereitschaftsdienst work

Germany has a standing answer to the Saturday-night fever and the Sunday-morning ear infection. It is called the ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst, the medical on-call service, and it is reached on 116117 from anywhere in the country.

The Federal Ministry of Health sets out the legal basis in its glossary entry for Notdienst, a page carrying Stand 7 February 2025: "Die Kassenärztlichen Vereinigungen haben die vertragsärztliche Versorgung auch außerhalb der üblichen Sprechstundenzeiten sicherzustellen." The regional associations of statutory-scheme doctors have to make sure contract-physician care is available outside the usual consulting hours too. The same page states that the service is reached free of charge on one nationwide number: "Unter der deutschlandweit einheitlichen Telefonnummer 116 117 ist der ärztliche Notdienst (Bereitschaftsdienst) kostenlos zu erreichen."

The service's own site says who it is for. Its page on the Bereitschaftsdienst gives the trigger as symptoms arriving when practices are shut: "Die Beschwerden treten zu einem Zeitpunkt auf, an dem die Praxen geschlossen sind, beispielsweise am Wochenende oder an einem Feiertag." Its FAQ puts the purpose in a single line: "Der ärztliche Bereitschaftsdienst ist für Patientinnen und Patienten da, die außerhalb der regulären Sprechzeiten dringend ärztliche Hilfe brauchen." On availability the Bereitschaftsdienst page states "Der Patientenservice ist rund um die Uhr erreichbar – 24 Stunden am Tag, 7 Tage die Woche", and the FAQ adds that the number is free for callers whether they dial from a landline, a mobile or over the internet.

This is not an American urgent-care clinic and it is not a walk-in centre. It is a duty rota run by the doctors' own associations, and it sits deliberately between your own practice and the ambulance service. UK readers will recognise the shape of it from NHS 111. Legislative position and page dates as at 8 August 2026.

Sources: BMG, Notdienst (ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst), 116117, Ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst and 116117, Häufige Fragen.

Getting this split right matters more in Germany than most arrivals expect, because the two numbers reach genuinely different services rather than two doors into the same one.

The 116117 FAQ is blunt about its own limits: "Bei schweren Unfällen und lebensbedrohlichen Notfällen ist die 116117 die falsche Anlaufstelle. In diesen Fällen muss der Notruf 112 gewählt werden." In serious accidents and life-threatening emergencies, 116117 is the wrong contact point and 112 must be dialled. The Bereitschaftsdienst page repeats it: "In lebensbedrohlichen Fällen alarmieren Sie bitte den Rettungsdienst unter der Notrufnummer 112."

The Ministry of Health's English-language portal gesund.bund.de, on its emergency numbers page last updated 8 June 2022, sets the threshold for 112 from the other side: "You should only call the emergency number if the situation is life-threatening or there is a risk of permanent damage." It lists heart attacks, strokes, serious injuries, loss of consciousness, severe allergic reactions and severe burns as examples, and states that "The emergency service will then send you an ambulance or emergency doctor ambulance."

There is no penalty attached to getting this wrong in an honest emergency. What there is, is a real cost to hesitating.

Sources: 116117, Häufige Fragen and gesund.bund.de, Numbers to call in the event of an emergency.

The call is answered by medically trained staff working through a structured assessment rather than by a receptionist taking a message. The 116117 FAQ describes it this way: "Nach Schilderung der Beschwerden, können diese mithilfe einer Software wichtige Warnsignale erkennen und Ihnen eine fundierte Empfehlung geben." After you describe the symptoms, the staff use software to spot important warning signs and give you a reasoned recommendation.

The routing is geographic and automatic. The same FAQ explains it with an example: "Wählt zum Beispiel in Bremen ein Mensch die 116117, spürt das System in Sekundenschnelle anhand der automatisch übermittelten Vorwahl auf, woher der Anruf genau kommt." The system works out within seconds, from the dialling code sent automatically, exactly where the call is coming from, so you reach the rota covering your area rather than a national queue. gesund.bund.de puts the outcome in plain English: the service "helps people with urgent medical problems outside of medical practice consulting hours", and if necessary "you can have a house visit from the non-emergency medical assistance service".

So a call ends in one of a few places. Advice to manage it at home and see your own practice when it reopens. A named on-call practice to go to now. Or, where your condition does not allow you to travel, a doctor coming to you. The Bereitschaftsdienst page confirms the home-visit route in the same terms.

Two smaller things worth knowing before you need them. gesund.bund.de gives a fax line for people with hearing, speech or language impairments: 0800 58 95 210. And the 116117 Terminservice, the online appointment booking that runs on the same brand, is described in the FAQ as being for people insured with a statutory Krankenkasse, so it is not the route in if you hold private cover.

Sources: 116117, Häufige Fragen and gesund.bund.de, Numbers to call in the event of an emergency.

You do not have to phone first. The 116117 Bereitschaftsdienst page gives two routes in the same sentence: "Sie können entweder direkt eine geöffnete Bereitschaftspraxis in Ihrer Nähe aufsuchen oder die 116117 wählen." Either go straight to an open on-call practice near you, or call 116117. The English-language 116117 page says the number will give you the location of the nearest on-call practice, and notes that this is provided in German only.

Where those practices sit has been shifting towards hospitals. The BMG glossary entry explains that many patients use hospital emergency departments instead of the on-call physician service, and that integrated arrangements known as Portalpraxen are therefore required at or inside hospitals. In practice that often means the on-call practice is a room off the same hospital entrance as the emergency department, which is convenient and also the source of a lot of confusion about which door to use.

If you do walk into a Notaufnahme, expect to be sorted rather than served in order of arrival. gesund.bund.de, on its emergency departments page last updated 31 January 2025, describes the department as providing 24/7 care for acute medical issues, and states that "Emergency department nurses and doctors use a set scale to establish how urgently patients need to be treated." It follows that through: "The categorization can lead to different waiting times for different patients." So arriving first does not mean being seen first. The same page states that at check-in patients "will be asked about their symptoms and their insurance status", so take your card or your policy details with you.

The honest summary for a weekend problem: call 116117 first if you can, because it is the fastest way to find out whether you need a practice, a home visit or nothing at all, and it will point you at the right building.

Sources: 116117, Ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst, 116117, English, BMG, Notdienst and gesund.bund.de, Emergency departments.

This is the part most guides skate over, and it is the first thing a family that has just landed needs to know.

116117 publishes an English-language page, and that page states that the service operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but that "this service is only available in German". The same page notes that the number will give you the location of the nearest on-call practice, again marked as German only. So the English page exists to explain the service, not to deliver it.

Plan around that rather than hope. Write your address out in German, including street, house number, floor and postcode, and keep it where anyone in the household can read it aloud. Keep a short German phrase for the core problem next to it. If a neighbour or colleague is reachable, calling with them beside you is worth more than any phrasebook. And if the situation is severe enough that language is the deciding obstacle, 112 is the number, because that is the threshold the emergency line exists for.

For non-urgent care, 116117 also runs a doctor and psychotherapist search that can be filtered by criteria including the languages a practice speaks. That search is a browser application and did not render to the automated checks made for this guide on 8 August 2026, so the exact filter path is not described here (verify by running the search in a browser at arztsuche.116117.de). It is a tool for finding a regular doctor in advance, not something to start using during a night-time problem.

Source: 116117, English.

gesund.bund.de answers the billing question directly on its emergency numbers page. It states that "The non-emergency medical assistance service is for patients with statutory and private health insurance", and then splits the payment: "The costs are covered by statutory health insurance. For private patients this will depend on the contract and deductible."

Read that carefully, because it is doing two jobs. If you are in the statutory scheme, out-of-hours care through 116117 is part of the contract-physician care the Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen are required to provide, and the cost sits with your Krankenkasse. If you are privately insured, whether and how much you get back is a question about your own policy wording and any excess on it, not about a public tariff. The call to 116117 itself is free either way.

The harder case is the one a lot of new arrivals are actually in: neither. Joining Germany's statutory scheme is not automatic for a new foreign resident, and a start date can sit weeks behind an arrival date while a residence permit, a registration and an employment or self-employment position are worked out. An out-of-hours problem does not wait for that sequence to finish.

That window is what private medical cover is arranged for, and it is also what German residence-permit rules are pointed at. A policy taken for a visa application or for a first year in Germany is designed to handle treatment while statutory membership is pending, and what it pays on any given claim is whatever the policy wording says. Three things to check in the wording rather than the brochure. Whether out-of-hours and emergency treatment is settled directly with the provider or reimbursed to you after you pay, since a Bereitschaftspraxis will ask about your insurance status at the desk. How the plan treats a hospital admission that follows an emergency attendance. And what happens at the handover point if you later move into the statutory scheme, so you are not carrying a month with neither.

Whatever you hold, ask for the itemised invoice on the way out. Nothing gets reimbursed without it.

Sources: gesund.bund.de, Numbers to call in the event of an emergency and BMG, Notdienst.

Everything above describes the system as it runs today. A reform of German emergency care is in the legislative process right now, so it is worth knowing what is proposed and what has actually happened.

The Federal Ministry of Health states that the Bundeskabinett adopted the draft law on 22 April 2026: "Das Bundeskabinett hat am Mittwoch, den 22. April 2026, den Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Reform der Notfallversorgung beschlossen." The Bundestag then held the first reading on 9 July 2026 as Drucksache 21/6808 and referred the bill to committee for further deliberation, with the health committee leading. A cabinet decision and a first reading are steps in passage, not the finish line. As at 8 August 2026 the bill is still in committee and has not completed the legislative process, and the BMG FAQ, carrying Stand 22 April 2026, gives no date for entry into force.

What is proposed matters for this page in two ways. The acute side of the 116117 service would be split out into a dedicated acute dispatch centre run by the regional doctors' associations: "Die bisherigen Aufgaben der Terminservicestelle im Bereich der Akutfallvermittlung nimmt zukünftig die sogenannte Akutleitstelle der Kassenärztlichen Vereinigung wahr." And the reform describes integrated emergency centres, Integrierte Notfallzentren: "Sie bestehen aus der Notaufnahme des Krankenhauses, einer Notdienstpraxis und der Ersteinschätzungsstelle." A hospital emergency department, an on-call practice and a shared initial-assessment point, digitally joined up.

For 112, the ministry's FAQ says nothing changes: "Über die Notrufnummer 112 ist für Notfälle mit Lebensgefahr oder schweren gesundheitlichen Störungen eine Rettungsleitstelle immer direkt erreichbar, hier ändert sich nichts." A rescue dispatch centre stays directly reachable on 112 for emergencies involving danger to life or serious health disturbance, and nothing changes there. That is the reassuring part. If the reform passes in something like its current form, the number you dial in a crisis stays the same, and what changes is what happens behind it.

Until it is law, use the system described above, and re-check the position if you are reading this some months from now.

Sources: BMG, Bundeskabinett beschließt Notfallreform, BMG, FAQ Notfallreform and Deutscher Bundestag, Erste Lesung zur geplanten Reform der Notfallversorgung.