How 116117 Actually Works in Hamburg: Referral Codes, Office Hours, and the Oversupply on Paper

The Official Rule, and Hamburg’s Own Hours

Getting a specialist appointment as a statutory (GKV) patient in Hamburg runs through the same nationwide mechanism as everywhere else in Germany, but KV Hamburg (KVH) staffs its own piece of it on its own schedule, and that detail changes how you should actually use the number.

KVH’s own patient page is direct about it: the Terminservicestelle’s telephone hours are “Montag bis Freitag, 7:00 bis 18:00 Uhr” (excluding public holidays). That’s the appointment-mediation side of 116117, the desk that finds you a specialist or GP slot. It is not the same as the ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst, the on-call medical service for something that genuinely can’t wait until your regular doctor reopens, which shares the same number but runs around the clock, every day of the year, nationwide. Some cities, Berlin among them, merged both functions under identical hours years ago. KVH’s page doesn’t describe that arrangement for Hamburg, so it’s worth treating the two as genuinely separate: call during business hours for a booking, and know that outside those hours the same 116117 routes you to on-call triage instead.

You don’t actually need to call at all for most bookings. KVH’s guidance confirms that since November 1, 2019, patients can search and book appointments themselves through the online eTerminservice at 116117.de or through the 116117 app, both available whenever you need them, not just during the TSS’s staffed phone hours.

Referrals, the Vermittlungscode, and Who Skips the Line

Most specialists require a referral (Überweisung) from your Hausarzt or another treating doctor, with a short, genuinely useful list of exceptions. Per KVH’s own page, Hausarzt, Kinderarzt, Augenarzt, and Frauenarzt appointments need no referral or code at all in Hamburg, book those directly. For every other specialist, the referral carries the one piece of information 116117 actually needs: a Vermittlungscode.

That code is a 12-digit alphanumeric string, and it isn’t something Hamburg invented on its own. KBV’s national guidance to practices explains that the code is generated directly in a doctor’s practice management software the moment a referral is issued, the same software every KV region’s member practices, including Hamburg’s, run on. It’s valid for 28 days from issuance, so a referral that sits in a drawer for a month effectively expires as a fast-track to 116117, even though the paper itself hasn’t changed. When the doctor creates it, they also mark the case dringend (urgent) or nicht dringend.

If your case is marked urgent, Verbraucherzentrale’s national consumer guidance confirms your right to a specialist appointment within four weeks of contacting 116117, and Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg’s own regional guidance walks Hamburg residents through the identical mechanism: hand over the Vermittlungscode by phone, through eterminservice.de, or via the app, and the service matches you to a contracted practice with an opening in a defined radius. You don’t get to pick the specific doctor or day, and routine checkups and minor complaints are explicitly outside the guarantee.

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels

For the practical side of actually landing one of those referral-free GP or pediatrician appointments in Hamburg, including why a citywide coverage figure well above 100 percent hasn’t stopped individual practices from closing their books, see this site’s dedicated guide to finding a Kinderarzt or Hausarzt in Hamburg.

Psychotherapy: No Referral, and Its Own Faster Clock

116117 mediates psychotherapy access too, and this is the part newcomers are least likely to have heard about. Per 116117.de’s national psychotherapy rules, which KV Hamburg applies the same way every other KV region does, the mandatory first step is a psychotherapeutische Sprechstunde, a consultation that determines what kind of treatment actually fits your situation, and it needs no referral or code at all. Once you contact 116117, it must offer you a Sprechstunde appointment within one week, and that appointment itself has to happen within four weeks of your call. If the consulting therapist determines your case needs Akutbehandlung, acute treatment available without separate Krankenkasse pre-approval, that window tightens to two weeks.

This site’s guide to Kinderpsychiater and therapy wait times in Hamburg goes deeper into how this plays out locally, including the PTV-11 form a doctor uses to mark a psychotherapy referral as urgent, the exact scope of Akutbehandlung (up to 24 sessions of 25 minutes or 12 of 50 minutes), and what to do when 116117 itself can’t find a practice slot inside its own deadline.

Hamburg’s Oversupply, on Paper and in Practice

Here’s a genuine local tension worth knowing before an “oversupplied” statistic talks you out of calling. KVH’s own Bedarfsplanung, the official needs-based plan governing how many practices of each specialty may open, formally applies Paragraph 101 SGB V’s oversupply threshold to most specialist groups across Hamburg, which on paper closes those fields to new practice admissions citywide. And yet KVH maintains its own supplementary document, an Anlage zum Hamburger Bedarfsplan specifically covering measures for a more flexible design of outpatient care, an acknowledgment, in KVH’s own planning language, that a citywide coverage ratio and a family’s actual experience trying to get seen don’t always match. This site’s guide to finding a Kinderarzt or Hausarzt in Hamburg documents exactly this gap in pediatric care: a citywide figure comfortably above 100 percent sitting alongside individual practices, including one KVH opened itself, that filled up and stopped taking new patients within months.

The practical takeaway is simple. If a specialty looks oversupplied on paper but you can’t get seen in a reasonable time, that mismatch is precisely why 116117’s 4-week mediation right exists. Use it rather than assuming the official number means an appointment should be easy to find on your own.

Step by Step

1. Check whether your appointment even needs a referralHausarzt, Kinderarzt, Augenarzt, Frauenarzt, and a first psychotherapy consultation all skip the referral system entirely in Hamburg.
2. For any other specialist, get an Überweisung with the urgency markedAsk your doctor to mark it dringend if your situation genuinely needs it, since that's what unlocks the 4-week mediation right.
3. Use the 12-digit Vermittlungscode within 28 daysIt's generated the moment your referral is issued and expires as a 116117 fast-track after that window.
4. Call 116117 only during Montag bis Freitag, 7:00-18:00 for TSS bookingsOutside those hours, the same number reaches the round-the-clock Bereitschaftsdienst instead, a different service for something that can't wait.
5. Skip the phone entirely if you don't need to talk to anyone116117.de and the 116117 app let you search and book directly, any time of day.
6. If a specialty seems "oversupplied" but you still can't get seen, use 116117 anywayKVH's own Bedarfsplan and the lived reality of getting an appointment don't always match, and the mediation right exists precisely for that gap.

Compliance Note

This page explains the general mechanics of Germany’s 116117 appointment-mediation system as KV Hamburg operates it, based on official KVH, KBV, Verbraucherzentrale, and 116117.de guidance. It is not medical advice, and specific rules, referral requirements, and phone hours can change. For your own situation, confirm current details directly with your doctor, your Krankenkasse, or the 116117 service.