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The reviews of treatment in Germany on this page were written by patients who came to AlenMed, and they appear here as they were written. The page is for anyone planning treatment in Germany who would rather hear from people who have already been through it than from advertising.
Please note: everything below is the personal experience of particular people and their own judgement. The course of an illness, of its treatment and of its outcome differ in every case and depend on the diagnosis, the stage, other conditions and a great many other circumstances. A comment is not a promise of the same result and cannot serve as a basis for decisions about treatment. Below the testimonials, the page also explains how to read other people’s stories and what to check for yourself.
Patient reviews of treatment in Germany
“This is not the first time we have turned to AlenMed for a consultation and for treatment with German specialists, because medicine in our country unfortunately still leaves much to be desired. Every time it goes with professionalism and attention to every one of our questions, whatever time of day we get in touch.”
— Tatyana
“Many thanks to Alla for quickly arranging all the consultations I needed, both in person and remotely. And I very much like that there is a video consultation directly with the doctor, which saves the price of a ticket to Germany and the extra cost of a hotel and transport.”
— Irina, cosmetic consultation
“Enormous thanks for the individual approach and for finding a specialist who was able to make an accurate diagnosis and draw up a clear plan of treatment, after which the illness went away and, I hope, for good. Thanks too to the interpreters and to AlenMed for the moral and psychological support throughout the treatment.”
— Nikolai K., oncology
Comments are published with the authors’ consent; only spelling and punctuation have been corrected, the content is unchanged.
How to read patient reviews
Read a review as an account of service, communication and how the patient felt, not as a verdict on the treatment: a patient cannot judge whether the best method was chosen. So a review helps you see how people are treated on a ward, not choose a therapy, which is planned from your own records. The same goes for reviews of German hospitals: they show how a department receives patients, not whether its treatment was right. Nor do reviews say how good medicine in Germany is; the strengths and limits of the German healthcare system are discussed in a separate article.
Look for your own situation: the same diagnosis, a similar stage and the same task, such as an examination, an operation or a second opinion. Specifics are worth most: how quickly the hospital replied, whether an interpreter was present at every important conversation, whether the estimate was clear, whether the patient could reach the doctor after discharge. General praise such as “everything was wonderful” tells you almost nothing. Check the date too: doctors and procedures change, and an old story may describe a department that no longer works that way.
Be wary if the same phrases turn up in different reviews, as if one person wrote them all. A promise of cure is a warning sign: a patient can say how things went for them but cannot vouch for anyone else’s result. Flawlessness is suspicious too: even successful treatment involves some waiting, paperwork and unfamiliar routines, and if nobody in a long list of reviews mentions any of it, the list has probably been curated. Pressure such as “book now, places are running out” is the language of advertising, not of patients.
Forums about treatment in Germany: useful and misleading
Forums are useful for practical tips and unreliable on the treatment itself. People turn to them to find someone to talk to, and members share the practical side of the trip well: a flat near the hospital, transport from the airport, the visa, a typical day on the ward. Such details rarely appear in official documents, and in a foreign country they save time and nerves.
Forums go wrong where medicine begins. Treatment advice comes from people with a different diagnosis, stage and other conditions; prices are often out of date, and many stories are retold second-hand. There is hidden advertising too: an intermediary posts as a grateful patient and recommends “their” hospital. Do not apply forum figures to your own case: the price depends on the diagnosis and the scope of treatment and comes from the hospital’s estimate. What treatment prices in Germany are made of and what a private doctor’s appointment costs is explained on a separate page.
Use a forum as a source of questions rather than answers: write down what worried or interested you and put it to the hospital doctor or the coordinator handling your trip. Check any medical advice from a forum, from “this drug works better” to “you can skip the operation”, with your own doctor: only they see your scans, test results and medical history.
Reviews by specialty
If experience in your own field matters most, start with the sections by specialty: oncology, childbirth and hepatitis. The oncology reviews cover what patients and families write about most and how cancer treatment is organised. The childbirth section is for expectant mothers who want to know how births are handled in a German hospital. The hepatitis section, for people with chronic viral hepatitis and their families, explains why experiences with different virus types and liver conditions cannot be compared.
There are also sections on dentistry, rehabilitation, varicose veins, autism, gastroscopy and colonoscopy; ophthalmology, plastic surgery and other fields will follow. The same rules apply there as here: a review is published only with its author’s consent and without edits in substance.
What to check besides reviews
Besides reviews, check three things: the department’s profile, the doctor, and the estimate with its paperwork. Start with the department: does it treat your condition as its main field or only occasionally? Certificates of specialist centres are a useful pointer. A cancer centre certified by the German Cancer Society (Deutsche Krebsgesellschaft), for example, is a network of inpatient and outpatient facilities in which all the specialties involved in treating a person with cancer work closely together, and every year it has to show in an audit that it meets the society’s requirements for treating a particular type of tumour.
Next, the doctor: who exactly will treat you, and what their specialty and experience are; the doctor profiles on this site show this. For the hospital, you need to know where it is and which department will admit you; the catalogue of hospitals in Germany lists them with their departments. Which German city has the best medicine? The city follows from the department that suits the diagnosis, not the other way round, and hospitals by city are in the same catalogue.
Finally, the estimate and paperwork. Ask for a written estimate listing what it covers: examinations, the operation, days on the ward, medication, doctors’ consultations. Find out who issues the invoice and whose account to pay into, the hospital’s or a doctor’s, and never pay an intermediary for treatment. Outpatient care and chosen chief-physician treatment for a patient who pays privately are calculated under the official German fee schedule, the Gebührenordnung für Ärzte (GOÄ), and a doctor’s invoice must show the date, the number and name of each service, its amount and the multiplier. Ask in advance how and when the hospital will return any unused part of the deposit after the final invoice.
Frequently asked questions
Can you trust reviews of treatment in Germany?
You can trust what the author saw personally: how quickly the hospital replied, whether an interpreter was there, whether the estimate was clear. You cannot judge the treatment from a review: a patient cannot tell whether the best method was chosen, and the outcome depends on the diagnosis, the stage and other conditions. The therapy is chosen by a doctor from your own records, not from someone else’s story.
How can you tell a genuine review from advertising?
A genuine review is usually specific and uneven: it contains details that are hard to invent and at least one inconvenience, such as waiting, paperwork or unfamiliar ward routines. Advertising shows itself in identical phrases across reviews, promises of cure and pressure to book quickly. A text that steers you towards one intermediary or hospital and leaves no questions open is an advert, not a patient’s experience.
Should you rely on forum advice about treatment in Germany?
You can rely on recent everyday tips about accommodation, transport, visas and ward routines, but not on medical advice, which comes from people with a different diagnosis and history. Forum prices do not apply to you either: the amount comes from the hospital’s estimate for your case. Questions you find on a forum are best put to the doctor or your coordinator.
Are the testimonials on this page edited?
Not in substance: only spelling and punctuation are corrected. Each testimonial on this page was written by the patient personally, after treatment or a consultation, and is published only with the author’s consent. That is why the reviews keep personal judgements and emotions: they are the patients’ own view of what happened to them, not a promise of the same result for anyone else.
How AlenMed arranges treatment and publishes reviews
AlenMed supports patients along the whole route, from translating documents to keeping in touch with the doctor after they return home, and publishes reviews only with their authors’ consent. Medical records are translated into German, the enquiry goes to the relevant department, and the patient receives the doctor’s answer and an estimate. Then come the hospital’s invitation and visa help, an airport pick-up, accommodation near the hospital, an interpreter at appointments and ward rounds and, after treatment, a translated discharge report. Each step is described on the page about arranging treatment in Germany.
Each review is written by the patient personally, after treatment or a consultation, and published only with the author’s consent; only spelling and punctuation are corrected, and the content stays the author’s own. New reviews, if their authors agree, will join this section under the same rules.
The material on this page is for information only, is not an offer and does not replace a consultation with a doctor. Whether treatment is possible, what it will involve and what it will achieve can be determined only after an examination at the hospital in person; the treatment plan is decided by the doctor.
