Waiting times for healthcare in Europe: The worst countries ranked
https://www.euronews.com/health/2026/06/03/waiting-times-for-healthcare-in-europe-the-worst-countries-ranked
Posted by euronews-english
Waiting times for healthcare in Europe: The worst countries ranked
https://www.euronews.com/health/2026/06/03/waiting-times-for-healthcare-in-europe-the-worst-countries-ranked
Posted by euronews-english
34 Comments
I’m shocked we’re not the worst
Hey! Where is Romania in that chart?! I was really curious about the waiting time.
How is it for emergency care?
In the Netherlands you don’t get a hip replacement. You get 2 paracetamols and pat on the back. /s
Yeeeeaaah…
I don’t think the hungarian number mirrors reality
Sometimes I complain about Belgium, but I will always stand by their healthcare system.
After living in five countries across the world, they still come up on top.
Thanks for adopting me, little smurfs!
Side note on the netherlands waiting time to see a specialist: it really depends on how urgent it is. I got cancer and got a specialist the same day, surgery the same week, chemo within a few weeks. Full remission 5 months later 😀
Waiting a week to see a GP is simply insane lol. I have never waited for more than an hour in my life.
Didn’t even check the article, but I’m certain Hungary is the worst, no contest.
The UK on track to being the worst #proud #sarcasm
Parasites gutting the NHS and funnelling money to private institutes run by politicians. Contracts going to Palantir too
Healthcare is gonna be an increasing problem in Europe and the rest of the World for that matter: population is getting older and people have higher expectations for care and treatments. 50 years ago old people simply wouldn’t get a hip replacement, and treatments for large swaths of illnesses and diseases simply didn’t exist. And while there are now treatments for rare and disabling diseases, they are often incredibly expensive as the medical companies have to cover years of R&D and expensive specialized manufacturing.
Poland mentioned! Finally we’re no 1 at something.
Guys, wanna hear something funny? Here in America, we have to wait months to get to see a soecialist, and when we do, we still gotta pay a shit ton of money. What is funniest is that the first appointment is usually 30 minutes( after waiting weeks for the service), it’s just to get to know you, and see your problem, and tell you to do a set of tests( that you have to pay for). To then send you for a follow up appointment in 2-6 month depending on how busy the doctor is.
There is a lot of waiting and there is a lot of money wasted, here.
Swedish healthcare is pretty great once you actually get admitted but good luck getting any care if you don’t have obvious symptoms. Funnily enough that’s created a market for private ‘healthcare’ companies that only do diagnostic work and regular checkups but don’t really try to provide care beyond that. If/when they find a problem the patient is admitted into the public healthcare system.
The categories for specialists don’t seem well chosen. You have to make the cut somewhere but maybe the midterm should be split between 2-6 and 6-12 months. Having waiting times of 10 and 50 weeks in the same category seems pretty misleading in either direction.
The hip is hip is surgered rapidly here because otherwise the often elderly people will recess into immobility and caring for those costs a lot more.
Anecdotal evidence, but I bashed my knee while inside a bus, nine years ago. I ended up going to the ER and got referenced to a orto consultation. I got a call for that same consultation a year ago… Thank god I had the money to use the private healthcare services
For Hungary, multiply those numbers by 3-4…
The page loaded so many ads my browser crashed
The fun thing about this is that if they broke out the UK into it’s constituent countries then Northern Ireland would be right up there at the top. Our situation is multiple times worse than the mainland UK. Mainly because we essentially have to run a parallel service due to the fact that we’re physically separate. So while the mainland can have cities with clinics that specialise in particular things we really can’t.
That and the fact that our politicians refuse to do any serious cooperation with the health service in the Republic of Ireland, which would take a lot of the pressure off if we worked together.
Yep Slovenia is quite something. Waiting for possible asthma test: 1 year inbetween two appointments in the lab.
Braces for kid: insured 3 year waiting time. Private: appointment within a month.
Psychiatrist: insured <– good luck finding one and then long wait list. Private: still a long waiting time.
ETA: going to the ER outside of your ‘region’, forget about it. 1 ER is closer to our place but located in a different region, so when I got there I got sent away… mind you, there were 2 people waiting in that ER. The ER they sent me to: packed and I waited for about 4 hrs.
I guess Greece is so bad that the sample patients still haven’t seen the doctor.
Someone was telling me about their experience last week – so anecdotal – in Italy. Their father needed cataract surgery. He could put himself on the waiting list and have it done at the public hospital (waiting list 3 years) or have it done privately (2000€) next week. N.B. It was the same doctor. So, cynically, the public healthcare system in Italy seems to be more a pension provider and a way of gathering clients for a doctor’s private practice.
In Germany people wait weeks to see a GP?
Every GP I have had in Germany had a daily (sometimes twice a day) timeslot that need no appointment.
The only thing I’ve had to wait for more than a week for by the GP was for something like a routine blood check or vaccine.
Overall in Poland specialist waiting times are abysmal (via health insurance) from 2-3 months for somethink like physician, to 6-montha gastroenterologist, 9-months cardiologist and over a year for neurologist/ neurosurgeon
Switzerland is a bit weird where everything is referred through your GP. But there are not enough doctors available to take new patients, so many people just go to walk in clinics.
I blew my knee in a cycling accident, was taken to the ER where they confirmed it was fucked, but that my GP needed to see me first and refer me to a MRI clinic. My GP was 2 hours away and I was in no condition to travel, so the hospital agreed to finally do it one week later.
MRI confirmed I needed a total knee reconstruction which I had one week later. Why didn’t they just do everything at once?
apparently Europe lost a lot of countries lately
In the Netherlands you need to wait until you get an appointment because sometimes the internet is slow, so it takes a while for the doctor to google your symptoms and come up with a “treatment plan”.
Three years ago I had an accident which resulted in multiple fractures in my right shoulder. This was on a Monday morning. Went to the ER and they took an x-ray photo of my shoulder followed by a cat scan 2 hours later to have a better look and had an operation on Tuesday morning at 9pm. They can move very fast in the Netherlands if the situation requires it.
Wow. I thought I was fucked here in Italy, guess we don’t have it as bad as I thought.
What a fucking shit site.
I don’t have a “house doctor” (GP?) so I just call whichever doctor seems right. Had an ear infection a few weeks ago, called the Ear-Nose-Throat guy…only to find out dude retired 12 years ago.
Found out my area has a whooping two doctors of that specialty left, one working out of the Hospital. So I called the other one, got an appointment three weeks out.
Can’t really complain with those low numbers of people available.
I’m a Dane living in Bulgaria the last 13 years. In Denmark I would always go through my GP and wait for specialist referrals if needed (I don’t recall ever having anything serious with or without a long wait though). Here in Bulgaria I think the waiting lists for the public health care system are not too abysmal – can’t say for certain though, as it’s still so relatively cheap here to just skip the main queues and make a direct appointment with a specialist in a private clinic or hospital. And then it’s often day(s) or a few weeks at most to get an appointment for a consultation.
Those are for minor issues though (most recently a few orthopedist and physical therapy appointments for a meniscus tear). I suspect anything serious including surgery might send me back to the slower public health insurance system.
Next to waiting time should be quality of results.
If a fast visit does not solve the problem and requires many more, its not any better.
Its an illusion of fast service.