Tere!

Listen, I finally registered a family doctor (or home doctor or GP, whatever you want to call).

You may wonder how to register a family doctor in Estonia. This article handles topics from how to find a family doctor to how to “use” them, dividing into four sections.

1) Who can register a family doctor?

In order to register a family doctor, you need a residence permit. In other words if you are working for an Estonian company or a degree student in Estonia, you automatically have the right to register a family doctor in Estonia. (See this for more information.)

In my case, since my purpose to come to Estonia was study as a master’s student, two years ago in 2017 I could have registered a family doctor when I got the TRP. With a family doctor, you may get treatment at quite cheap fee or some special services for free so it’s better to register one. When I was in Ireland as an exchange student in 2015-2016, I didn’t catch any cold or get ill at all so I had spent time in Estonia without a doctor. However, I really felt I needed a family doctor as my depression level was still low and tried finding but at that time I was working at full time, suffering from many things and spending time as a depressed individual. It was eventually after leaving the hospital when I got a family doctor.

Also, if you can speak Estonian (or Russian), you may not find any difficulty in getting a family doctor, but in addition to the fact that there are more immigrants in Estonia and that we automatically require English speaking doctors, it’s not easy to find a family doctor in Estonia. In the following sections, I’m writing about how exactly to find a family doctor.

2) How to find a doctor?

First of all, access the website to search family doctors in Estonia. It’s available only in Estonian but it’s not that difficult to use this website. As accessing, the third box is a search box depending on areas so enter your area that you live in. After the entry, click “Otsi”. The example is below.

I entered “Kesklinn” as an example. (2) in the image measn doctors’ availability. If they can accpet new patients it says “jah” and if not it’s “ei”.

If you found someone who seems to accept new patients, click their name under “Perearsti” column and call or email them.

Usually they say they don’t accpet any new patients.

“What the hell! You just told us!”

You may have thought like that. Sorry 😛 but no worries, I’ll explain another “hack” in the following section, which might surprise you.

3) My case?

Listen, I tried the method above like you might have done. I called and asked them if they could speak English and told them that I wanted to register a family doctor – none of them could accept me.

Then I did this:

Search “Perearstikeskus”.

While in the hospital my friend advised me to ask my doctor there how to find a family doctor. He told me perearstikeskus in Laagri, where are lots of young doctors who might speak English more or less compared to elder doctors in Estonia. However, as mentioned above, they couldn’t accept me as a new patient.

“Perearstikeskus” means “family doctor centre”. I thought there would be more perearstikeskus in Estonia so I searched by this word.

I got multiple results online and chose one of them in Lasnamäe. From my experience I thought it was better to use Google translate and read Estonian. Then I found one doctor who seemed to be able to have new patients and called him:

Hi, could you speak English?

Yes I can.

I’m looking for a family doctor but could you accept me as a new patient?

Of course!

Well, I live in XX (the name of my living area) but is it okay?

Sure! Just come here and find my name!

I got panicked.

I called him desiring to get one so I was incredibly happy. It was Friday when I called him so I decided to visit him on Monday. The reason why I asked him the area is because some doctors (are said to be able to) accept only those who live in the area that they are in charge of. (Does this make more sense why I explained to search doctos by area above?)

The medical centre was in a tricky place and quite far from my (previous) place but I was sure I wouldn’t need him that frequently so the distance was not anything big for me.

4) Registration and after that….

Then on Monday after working I went to the medical centre. I asked a nurse and she gave me an application from (paper!) and I just wrote necessary information and the doctor’s name that I wanted. That was it. She said the system would have this information immediately.

Actually, however, it’s from the next month after the registration to have the family doctor available, which means your State Portal wouldn’t have a famly doctor information yet right after the registration. For example, given that you registered a family doctor in January, your doctor is available for you from February.

(However, as February started I checked the portal site but it didn’t have my doctor’s name so I asked Haigekassa and then mymed, which said my doctor would be available for me starting in March. Why the heck…)

It’s hard to find an English-speaking family doctor in Estonia but once you found one everything would be alright. Keep searching and this is the reality to live in a non-English speaking country.

I hope you can get one.

Aitäh! 🙂