You cannot book a specialist in Amsterdam.
A huisarts refers you, the referral goes to the hospital electronically, and without it the appointment does not exist and the insurer does not pay.
That single rule explains most of the frustration arriving residents report, and it also explains the cost.
The GP is free at the point of use; everything downstream of the GP comes out of your €385 compulsory excess first.
How To See A Specialist In Amsterdam
Register with a huisarts as soon as you have an address, because practices take patients by catchment area and the good ones close their lists.
Doing this before you are ill is the difference between a same-week appointment and a fortnight of phone calls.
The referral is called a verwijzing and it is issued by the GP, not requested by you.
It travels electronically to the hospital or clinic, so you book the appointment yourself afterwards but the hospital already has the clinical reason for it.
A referral names a specialty rather than a person in most cases, which means you choose the hospital.
Ask the GP directly whether one Amsterdam hospital is better for your particular problem, since they refer constantly and will tell you.
Second opinions are a formal right and are arranged the same way.
You go back to the GP, ask for a referral to a different hospital, and the insurer treats it as normal care rather than as a complaint.
Insurance, Costs, And What You Will Pay
The compulsory excess, the eigen risico, is €385 in 2026 for everyone aged eighteen and over.
It applies to specialist consultations, diagnostics, hospital treatment and prescribed medicines, and it does not apply to the huisarts, the out-of-hours GP post, midwife care or maternity nursing.
You can raise it voluntarily in steps of €100 up to €500 in exchange for a lower monthly premium.
Take the maximum and a hospital admission can cost you €885 before the insurer contributes anything, which is a gamble worth making only if you are certain of your year.
The eigen bijdrage is a different thing and people conflate the two constantly.
The excess is the first slice of your own costs; a personal contribution is a permanent top-up on specific items such as certain medicines or devices, and it is payable even after the excess is used up.
Policy type decides how much freedom you have.
A naturapolis pays in full only at contracted providers, while a restitutiepolis lets you go anywhere at a higher premium, which matters if you want a specific Amsterdam hospital or an English-speaking private clinic.
Where To Go For Urgent Care And Hospital Treatment
Call 112 for anything life-threatening, and let the ambulance service decide the hospital.
For everything urgent but not life-threatening outside working hours, call the Amsterdam out-of-hours GP service on 088 00 30 600, because you cannot attend a huisartsenspoedpost without an appointment.
The four posts sit inside hospitals, which is what makes the system work.
They are at OLVG Oost on Oosterpark 9, OLVG West on Jan Tooropstraat 164, BovenIJ on Statenjachtstraat 1 in Noord, and Amsterdam UMC location AMC on Meibergdreef 9 in Zuidoost.
For planned specialist care the choice is broadly between a general hospital and an academic one.
OLVG covers most general specialties across its two sites, Amsterdam UMC runs the academic caseload at AMC and VUmc and takes the complicated referrals, and BovenIJ serves Noord.
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek is the outlier and the one to name in a sentence about cancer.
It is a dedicated oncology hospital and research institute rather than a department inside a general hospital, and referrals to it come through the same GP route as everything else.
Choosing Providers And Navigating Amsterdam Options
Zorgkaart Nederland is the public database of patient ratings for individual doctors, practices and hospitals, and it is more useful than general review sites because it is care-specific.
Combine it with the GP’s own opinion, which is the single best filter available to you and costs nothing.
English-language provision is better here than in most Dutch cities but is not universal in specialist clinics.
The Expat Medical Centre is set up for internationals and works in English by default, which is worth knowing if your Dutch is not yet at the level of describing symptoms precisely.
Waiting times differ by hospital for the same procedure, and nobody will volunteer that.
Ask what the wait is when you book, then ring a second hospital in the referral’s specialty and compare, because the referral is not tied to one site.
Take three things to a first specialist appointment: your BSN, your insurance details and a written list of medicines with generic names and doses.
Brand names differ between countries and a generic name removes a whole conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
The answers below assume Dutch basic insurance and 2026 figures.
Which medical specialties can I find in Amsterdam, and what does each one do?
The general hospitals cover the full range of everyday specialties, from cardiology, orthopaedics and dermatology to gastroenterology, neurology and ophthalmology.
Amsterdam UMC adds the academic and rare-disease caseload across its AMC and VUmc sites, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek handles cancer specifically.
How do I choose the right medical specialist in Amsterdam for my symptoms?
You do not choose the specialty, the GP does, and that is the point of the referral system rather than a bureaucratic obstacle.
What you choose is the hospital, so ask the GP which Amsterdam site handles your problem most often and check waiting times at two of them before booking.
Do I need a referral from a GP to see a specialist in Amsterdam?
Yes, for specialist care under Dutch basic insurance a verwijzing from a huisarts is required, and without one the insurer will not reimburse.
The referral is sent electronically to the hospital, so you book the appointment afterwards rather than carrying paperwork.
How much does it typically cost to visit a GP or specialist in the Netherlands?
A GP visit costs you nothing directly, because huisarts care is excluded from the compulsory excess.
Specialist and hospital care come out of the €385 excess first, and only after that does the insurer pay.
Can doctors trained in the US work as medical specialists in Amsterdam, and what are the requirements?
Practising here requires registration in the BIG register, and a non-EEA medical qualification goes through a recognition procedure before that registration can be granted.
Dutch language competence is part of it, since consultations, records and referrals are conducted in Dutch.
How is the quality of medical care in Amsterdam compared with other countries?
The structural differences matter more than any ranking: primary care is strong and free at the point of use, gatekeeping is strict, and prescribing is conservative by international standards.
Arrivals used to seeing a specialist directly often read that conservatism as neglect, when what it reflects is a system that treats the GP as the specialist in undifferentiated problems.
