Frankfurt Hospitals: University Medicine and Specialist Centres

Frankfurt hospitals are easy to reach: the city has Germany’s largest airport, and for many families looking for treatment abroad that makes Frankfurt the first city they look at. A convenient journey is only the start, though; what matters more is which department fits the diagnosis.

This page covers the city’s university medicine, a list of AlenMed’s partner hospitals in and around Frankfurt, why there is no single «best» hospital, how to choose by diagnosis and how AlenMed arranges treatment. It is an overview of the city, and each hospital has its own detailed page.

Universitätsmedizin Frankfurt: Care, Research and Teaching

Universitätsmedizin Frankfurt is the shared brand under which the University Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine of Goethe University work hand in hand, and the name stresses the link between patient care, research and teaching. The hospital itself is a public-law institution supervised by the Hessian science ministry, and its Niederrad campus lies on Theodor-Stern-Kai. In 2025 it had 1,356 beds, including day-clinic beds.

Its departments include eye care, dermatology, women’s health and obstetrics, ENT, paediatrics and adolescent medicine, an intensive care centre and a centre for congenital malformations. International patients are usually referred here with rare and complex conditions, when doctors from several specialties need to work on one case at the same time. For the family, that means fewer moves between hospitals: tests, surgery and follow-up treatment take place under one roof.

Like every German university hospital, it combines patient care with research and the training of doctors; its departments, admission and the course of treatment are described on the University Hospital Frankfurt page.

List of Hospitals in Frankfurt, Germany, Working With AlenMed

AlenMed works with five hospitals in Frankfurt and just across the city limits, listed below. The city has more hospitals than these, but the list covers only AlenMed’s partners, and everything said about them is based on the hospitals’ own information. The order of the entries is not a ranking.

• The University Hospital — the centre of the city’s university medicine, described above.
• Nordwest Hospital Frankfurt (Krankenhaus Nordwest) — an academic teaching hospital of Goethe University with 503 beds as of 2026, according to the hospital. It belongs to the Hospital zum Heiligen Geist foundation and is part of the university cancer centre UCT Frankfurt–Marburg, certified by Deutsche Krebshilfe; its centres include one for gastrointestinal tumours and one for palliative care.
• Bürgerhospital Frankfurt — an academic teaching hospital of Goethe University and one of Germany’s largest maternity hospitals, with 4,535 births in 2025. It is a level 1 perinatal centre with a neonatal intensive care unit and paediatric surgery that cares for high-risk and multiple pregnancies, and it also runs a reference centre for thyroid and parathyroid surgery and an eye clinic (Augenklinik); the hospital has 320 beds as of 2026, according to its own figures.
• Agaplesion Frankfurt Diakonie Hospital (Agaplesion Frankfurter Diakonie Kliniken) — two Protestant hospitals, Bethanien and Markus, within the Christian healthcare group Agaplesion. The Markus hospital has a urology department, an interdisciplinary centre for robot-assisted surgery and a department of gynaecology and gynaecological oncology.
• Sana Klinikum Offenbach, just outside Frankfurt — an academic teaching hospital of Goethe University that describes itself as a maximum-care hospital, the highest level of hospital care in Germany.

Is There a Best Hospital in Frankfurt?

No single best hospital in Frankfurt exists for every patient. Rankings fold unrelated things such as reputation, equipment and patient reviews into one score, and the right hospital for a bowel tumour is not necessarily the right one for a high-risk pregnancy. A high place on a general list says nothing about how a hospital treats your particular condition, so what can be compared is a department and its experience with a specific diagnosis.

Instead, look at how many patients with your diagnosis the department treats, whether the centre is certified, whether a cancer case goes to a tumour board, where oncologists, surgeons and radiologists decide on treatment together, and how the doctors answer the reports and images you send. Certified cancer centres in Frankfurt and other cities are shown on OncoMap, the German Cancer Society’s map of the centres it certifies, and for cancer the page on cancer treatment in Frankfurt is the next place to look.

Choosing a Hospital in Frankfurt by Diagnosis

The diagnosis decides where the first request should go. A complex or rare disease that needs several specialists points to the university hospital, digestive tract tumours to Nordwest, and pregnancy, newborns and thyroid surgery to the Bürgerhospital. For eye diseases there are the eye departments of the university hospital and of the Bürgerhospital, and for urology, including robot-assisted operations, the Agaplesion Markus hospital. Treat this as orientation rather than a verdict: whether a department is right for you is decided by its doctors once they have seen your documents.

Heart patients may also be referred to the Kerckhoff Clinic in Bad Nauheim, north of Frankfurt, a specialist centre for heart, lung, vascular and rheumatic diseases.

Frequently asked questions

Do hospitals in Frankfurt accept patients from abroad?

Yes, and it starts with a written request. Medical reports and images are translated into German and sent to the chosen department, and the hospital replies with a treatment proposal and a cost estimate. At the university hospital, an International Office looks after patients from abroad: it takes over the administrative side, prepares a cost estimate in English or German, handles the advance payment and issues the invitation for the embassy.

Do doctors in Frankfurt speak English?

In many departments they do, but it is better not to rely on it: a diagnosis, the risks of an operation and the medication plan are best discussed in a language the patient follows without effort. That is why a medical interpreter attends the appointments and translates both the doctor’s explanations and the family’s questions. The page on English-speaking doctors in Germany explains where to find doctors who consult in English themselves.

Which specialties do Frankfurt hospitals offer?

They range from oncology and urology to obstetrics, newborn and paediatric surgery, eye care and thyroid surgery, and each hospital has its own set. The university hospital takes rare and complex cases that need several specialists at once. Nordwest has a centre for gastrointestinal tumours, the Bürgerhospital concentrates on births, newborns and the thyroid, and the Markus hospital on urology and robot-assisted surgery. Which department suits you is best judged from the doctors’ reply to your documents.

How AlenMed Arranges Treatment at a Frankfurt Hospital

AlenMed takes care of the documents and the correspondence with the hospitals, and later of the trip and support on site. Reports and images are translated into German and sent to one or several departments so that the family can compare options; each hospital replies with its own treatment proposal and cost estimate. The more complete the file — recent test results, images on disc, a list of all medications — the more precise the hospital’s answer and the fewer follow-up questions.

Once a decision is made, AlenMed helps with the visa invitation, the arrival at Frankfurt airport and accommodation near the hospital, and a medical interpreter attends the appointments. The company office is in Munich, and its 86 partner hospitals in 38 cities are spread across Germany, so an option in another city can be found if needed.

This material is for reference only and is not an offer. The treatment plan is decided by the doctor at a face-to-face consultation.