Almost every foreign resident who uses a private clinic in Lithuania is already covered by the state system, and most of them are surprised to learn it. Private care here is not an alternative to public healthcare. It is a way of buying two specific things the public system rations โ an appointment this week rather than next month, and a doctor who will conduct it in English โ from clinics that are, in many cases, the same clinics the state pays to treat you for nothing.
That overlap is the thing to understand before you spend anything. Northway, Meliva and Hila all hold contracts with the territorial health insurance fund. Walk into one as a registered, PSD-insured patient with a referral and you pay nothing. Walk into the same building the same morning without a referral, or without having registered there, and you are a private payer at the clinic's list price. The building did not change. Your paperwork did.
Table of Contents
- What you are actually buying
- The networks, compared
- What a consultation costs
- How a private clinic bills a PSD patient
- Registering with a private family doctor
- English-speaking doctors
- Waiting times, and what they are worth
- Do you need private insurance?
- Common mistakes
- Why this comparison is ordered this way
- FAQ
What You Are Actually Buying
No clinic pays to appear here and nothing on this page is paid placement. Where a provider runs an affiliate programme we may earn a commission if you use our link; where none exists โ and today none of these clinics runs one โ the link still goes to their own page, untracked. The ordering reflects what each network publishes and how usable it is for someone who does not read Lithuanian, never what it pays.
Lithuanian private medicine is not a parallel health service. There is no private hospital here doing cardiac surgery in competition with the university clinics; complex and emergency care goes to the public system regardless of what you have paid or who you are insured with. What the private networks sell is access โ the outpatient front end.
Those four numbers are the whole economics of the sector on one line. The Compulsory Health Insurance Fund settles a level II specialist consultation at โฌ25.05, and a remote one at โฌ17.06. The same clinics charge a private payer roughly three times that. Nobody is being overcharged and nobody is being subsidised improperly โ the two prices buy different things. The state price buys a slot in a queue. The private price buys a slot on Thursday.
So the question is never "public or private". It is: for this particular appointment, is the wait or the language barrier worth โฌ80.00 to me? For a repeat prescription, almost never. For a dermatology opinion on a mole you have been staring at for three weeks, very often.
The three things private clinics genuinely do better
- Speed. Same-week appointments are normal where the public queue for the same specialty runs to weeks.
- Language. English is advertised doctor by doctor in the private networks, and effectively not at all in the public ones.
- Paperwork you can use. An invoice and a summary in a language your insurer reads, which matters enormously if you are claiming on a foreign policy.
The Networks, Compared
Four networks cover most of what a foreign resident will need, and they are ordered here by how much of their own pricing and staffing they put in public โ because a clinic that publishes its price list is a clinic you can plan around, and one that does not is a phone call before every appointment.
Two of them have changed names recently and it causes real confusion. Kardiolita and InMedica are both now Meliva; their old domains redirect. SK Impeks Medicinos diagnostikos centras is now Hila. If you were given a recommendation a year ago, it may point at a brand that no longer exists on the door.
Northway is the most completely published network in the country: every service carries a euro figure and every doctor's profile carries the languages they consult in, so you can choose the appointment and the language before you pick up the phone. Four cities means a move within Lithuania does not restart you, and registered PSD patients get their primary care funded there. Baltic-American Clinic runs its whole operation in English, including the parts that come after the appointment โ the medical summary and the invoice are issued in English or Russian, which is what a foreign insurer needs to reimburse you, and you can see in advance what a professor costs against a registrar. Hila, formerly SK Impeks Medicinos diagnostikos centras, is unusually explicit about the thing most private clinics leave you to work out: register with them and your family medicine is funded by the state exactly as it would be at a municipal polyclinic, so you can see exactly what not registering costs you. It also runs rehabilitation and sports medicine under the same roof. Meliva is the largest private network in the country, formed by merging Kardiolita and InMedica under one brand โ one set of paperwork where there used to be three โ and its clearest published material is on what the state pays for inside its clinics rather than on what it charges privately, so it is clear about what an insured patient will not be charged for.
Northway
Prices and languages published
Key highlights
Key features
- Full euro price list
- Doctor profiles tagged lt / en / ru
- Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipฤda and Kretinga
- PSDF-contracted
Published prices
- family doctor
- โฌ80.00
- prices published
- Yes
- PSDF contract
- Yes
Summary
- Full euro price list
- Doctor profiles tagged lt / en / ru
- Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipฤda and Kretinga
- PSDF-contracted
- Price list is Lithuanian-only
- Regional branches price lower than Vilnius
- No-referral specialist access is private
Baltic-American Clinic
English by default
Key highlights
Key features
- Site and price list in English
- Paperwork in a language your insurer reads
- Senior and professorial prices separate
- Central Vilnius
Published prices
- GP consultation
- โฌ80.00
- language
- English
- prices published
- Yes
Summary
- Site and price list in English
- Paperwork in a language your insurer reads
- Senior and professorial prices separate
- Central Vilnius
- Vilnius only, no regional network
- Prices published as wide ranges
- No published state-funding registration
Hila
Register and routine care is free
Key highlights
Key features
- State funding follows you here
- Publishes the unregistered price
- Certificate prices listed separately
- Vilnius and Klaipฤda
Published prices
- unregistered visit
- โฌ89.00
- registered visit
- Free
- PSDF contract
- Yes
Summary
- State funding follows you here
- Publishes the unregistered price
- Certificate prices listed separately
- Vilnius and Klaipฤda
- Highest unregistered family doctor price here
- Site and price list Lithuanian-first
- No language tagging on individual doctors
Meliva
Widest national footprint
Key highlights
Key features
- Widest geographic coverage
- Publishes what the state settles
- Dental compensation by category
- Absorbed Kardiolita and InMedica
State-funded cover
- consultation price
- Not published
- PSDF contract
- Yes
- was
- Kardiolita, InMedica
Summary
- Widest geographic coverage
- Publishes what the state settles
- Dental compensation by category
- Absorbed Kardiolita and InMedica
- No price table โ ask when booking
- Old brand names now dead
- Materials still charged on dental work
Two more names you will meet, neither of which is a general clinic. Affidea runs imaging and diagnostic clinics across several cities and is the name most often given for an MRI or CT scan. Medicina practica is a laboratory network โ it sells clinical and microbiological tests, not consultations โ and it is where a great many other clinics send their samples. Neither carries a card here because neither is somewhere you book a doctor.
What a Consultation Costs
Every figure in this table comes from the clinic's own published list. There is no national private tariff and no regulator that sets one, so the same specialty genuinely varies by half across four buildings in the same city.
| Appointment | Northway | Hila | Baltic-American | What the PSDF pays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family doctor / GP | โฌ80.00 | โฌ89.00 | โฌ80.00 | Free if registered |
| Family doctor, follow-up | โฌ55.00 | Not published | โฌ60.00 | Free if registered |
| Remote consultation | โฌ49.00 | Not published | โฌ45.00 | โฌ17.06 |
| Neurologist | โฌ80.00 | โฌ97.00 | โฌ80.00 | โฌ25.05 |
| Cardiologist | Not published | Not published | โฌ80.00 | โฌ30.70 |
| Gynaecologist | โฌ55.00 | Not published | โฌ90.00 | โฌ25.05 |
| Urologist | โฌ50.00 | Not published | Not published | โฌ25.05 |
| Dermatologist | โฌ80.00โโฌ95 | Not published | Not published | โฌ25.05 |
| Professor or PhD | โฌ130.00 | โฌ115.00 | โฌ110.00 | โฌ42.85โโฌ57 |
Three things are worth reading out of that grid.
Seniority is priced, and steeply. A consultation with a mokslลณ daktaras โ a doctor of medical sciences โ runs โฌ130.00 at Northway against โฌ80.00 for a standard dermatology appointment. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how unusual your problem is. For a first opinion on something routine it is money spent on a title.
Remote consultations are the cheapest real appointment in the system. โฌ49.00 at Northway, โฌ30.00 for a remote follow-up. For a prescription renewal or a test result you already have in hand, there is no reason to travel.
Blood tests are not the expensive part. Northway draws blood for โฌ3.00โโฌ4. The laboratory analysis is priced separately, and much of routine testing is free for a registered PSD patient anyway.
A published price is a list price for one appointment, not a total. The consultation buys the doctor's time. Anything that happens during it โ a dermatoscopy, an ultrasound, a swab, a biopsy โ is billed on top from the same list. Ask what the likely add-ons are when you book, because the clinic can tell you and the price list cannot.
How a Private Clinic Bills a PSD Patient
This is the part that catches people out, and the rule is published by the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund rather than by the clinics. Whether you pay depends on the contract, the referral and the registration โ not on whether the building is private.
The state pays when
- The clinic holds a contract with the territorial health insurance fund
- You are PSD-insured
- You are registered with that clinic, for primary care
- You hold a referral from your family doctor, for a specialist
- The service is on the funded list
You pay when
- The clinic has no contract with the fund at all
- You want a specialist and have no referral
- You choose a specific doctor on your own initiative
- You choose a more expensive material, medicine or technology โ you pay the difference
- The service is on the official paid list: cosmetic surgery, dental implants, acupuncture, certain certificates
The consequence is a genuinely strange-looking bill. A registered patient at Northway or Hila can have a consultation, a set of laboratory tests and a preventive programme entirely funded, then pay โฌ26.00 in the same visit for the certificate their employer wants โ because certificates are on the paid list and the appointment was not.
Nothing you pay for may be a surprise, and there is a rule about it
Where you choose a paid or partly paid service, the Fund requires that the choice is recorded in your medical documents and confirmed by the doctor's signature before you consent. If a clinic asks you for money for something it has not written down and had you agree to, that is not how the system is supposed to work. Ask what you are being charged for and why the state is not covering it. Courts have ordered clinics to refund co-payments taken without a basis.
There is a second, quieter consequence. Because the private networks hold state contracts, going private does not remove you from the public system โ and a private specialist's referral does not open a public door. The referral that matters is the one from the family doctor you are registered with, wherever that clinic is.
Registering With a Private Family Doctor
This is the single highest-value move available to a foreign resident, and it costs nothing. Family medicine in Lithuania is funded per registered patient, and โ as Hila puts it on its own page โ the funding is the same whether the patient chose a private or a state provider. Register with a private clinic and your routine care is free there.
Check the clinic has a fund contract
Not every private clinic does, and it is the difference between free primary care and full price. Northway, Hila and Meliva all state that they do.
Bring identification
Passport or ID card and your residence permit. Your asmens kodas is what identifies you to the fund.
Sign the registration form at reception
It is a short form and there is no fee. You can only be registered with one primary care provider at a time.
Choose your family doctor
Ask which doctors are taking patients and which of them consult in English before you pick. This is the moment that decision is cheap.
Wait out any switching restriction
Changing provider more than once in a short period can attract a charge set by the clinic. Ask before you move if you have registered somewhere recently.
Registered patients get a great deal more than a consultation. Hila counts around 123 services free to a registered insured patient โ consultations, investigations, preventive programmes and procedures within the national norms. Northway lists free laboratory tests on the same basis.
Register before you need it. Registration takes twenty minutes and can be done on a day when nothing is wrong. Doing it while ill, in a clinic you have never visited, is the version of this everybody regrets. It is the same advice as for the public system โ the difference is only which building you walk into.
English-Speaking Doctors
Lithuania's official information centre for newcomers puts it plainly: English-language services are more common in private facilities. What it does not say โ and what actually decides whether an appointment works โ is that the private networks differ enormously in how far they will commit to it in advance.
Northway tags every doctor with the languages they consult in. A profile reads lt, en, ru, or lt, en, it, and the tags appear on the same page as the price. You can pick the specialty, then the language, then the appointment, without speaking to anybody. Across its neurology and gynaecology lists most doctors carry English, several carry Russian, and a handful carry Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Spanish or Japanese.
Baltic-American Clinic operates in English throughout โ the site, the price list, the consultation, and critically the paperwork afterwards. Its medical summaries and invoices are issued in English or Russian, which is the difference between a foreign insurer reimbursing you and asking for a certified translation first.
Hila and Meliva publish Lithuanian-first sites and do not tag individual doctors by language, so English there is a question for the receptionist rather than something you can filter on.
Ask for the language in writing when you book. A receptionist saying "yes, the doctor speaks English" and a doctor comfortable taking a history in English are different claims. Book by email or through the clinic's own form where you can, state that the consultation needs to be in English, and keep the reply. It is a two-minute step that turns a language question into a booking condition.
Russian is widely spoken by Lithuanian doctors of an older generation and is often the easier second language in practice, particularly outside Vilnius. If you have any Russian at all, say so when you book โ it widens the list of doctors available to you considerably.
Waiting Times, and What They Are Worth
The wait is the product. Everything else on this page is secondary to it, so it is worth being precise about how long the public wait actually is rather than repeating the folklore.
Those are survey figures โ Baltijos tyrimai polled 1,015 people for LRT in April 2025 โ and they measure what people report rather than what the queue registers say. The most common experience is two to four weeks. A fifth of people wait two to three months.
Against that, private clinics do not publish waiting times at all. Not one of the four networks here states a time to appointment anywhere on its site, so ask for the first available slot when you call and treat that answer as the only figure that exists. It is also the figure that decides whether the fee is worth paying: if the private slot is Thursday and the public one is in three weeks, you are buying nineteen days.
The Compulsory Health Insurance Fund does publish real queue data, drawn from the pre-registration system and refreshed monthly, showing where and how long people wait by specialist. It covers state-funded services only โ which is exactly the comparison you want before deciding to pay.
Paying privately does not shorten a public queue you are already in. A private consultation is a separate episode of care. If you need a procedure the public system will fund, a private opinion gets you the opinion faster โ it does not move you up the list for the procedure.
Do You Need Private Insurance?
For most people reading this: no, and the arithmetic is not close. If you are employed here, 6.98% of your gross salary already goes to PSD and you are fully covered. Paying a second premium on top buys you speed you can also buy one appointment at a time โ and at โฌ80.00 a consultation, you would need a great many appointments a year before a policy came out ahead.
There are three situations where the answer changes.
You are not in PSD at all. Non-EU students who are not working, and new arrivals who have not started a job, are outside the system. That is not an optimisation question โ it is a condition of your residence permit, and our student health insurance guide covers what the policy has to do. You can also self-pay PSD at โฌ80.48 a month.
Your employer is buying it, not you. Employer-paid health cover is a common benefit here and the calculation is different when the premium is not coming out of your pocket.
You want cover that reaches beyond Lithuania. A Lithuanian PSD contribution buys Lithuanian care and EHIC cover within the EU. An international policy is a different product answering a different question.
Northway accepts policies from more than 17 Lithuanian and foreign insurers, including the international names foreign employers tend to use, so a policy bought abroad is usable here โ but check the clinic accepts direct settlement before you assume you will not be paying up front and claiming back.
Cancel once PSD is active. If you bought private cover to get your permit and have since started work, your PSD contributions began with your first payslip. Check your status, and stop paying twice for the same thing. That advice costs us money and it is still the right advice.
Common Mistakes
Not registering with a family doctor at all. This is the expensive one, and it is almost universal among new arrivals. An unregistered patient at Hila pays โฌ89.00 for the consultation a registered patient in the same room gets for nothing. Registration is free, takes twenty minutes and can be done at a private clinic.
Assuming a private clinic means a private bill. Northway, Hila and Meliva all hold state contracts. A great deal of what happens inside them is settled by the fund. People pay list price for services they were entitled to have funded because nobody told them to ask.
Booking a specialist without a referral and calling it a private choice. It is a private choice, and it costs the difference between โฌ25.05 and โฌ80.00. Sometimes that is the right trade. Making it by accident, because you did not know a referral existed, is not.
Trusting a brand name that has been retired. Kardiolita and InMedica are Meliva; SK Impeks is Hila. Recommendations from friends who arrived two years ago point at signage that no longer exists, and searching the old name lands you on a redirect rather than the current price list.
Paying for something that was never written down. The Fund requires a paid service to be recorded and signed for before you consent to it. A charge that appears without that step is worth questioning on the spot rather than after.
Budgeting from the consultation price alone. The dermatoscopy, the ultrasound, the biopsy and the lab work are all separate lines. Ask for the likely total, not the headline.
Buying private insurance you already have. Employed here means PSD-covered. Check before you renew a policy that duplicates it.
Why This Comparison Is Ordered This Way
Why You Can Trust This Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need private health insurance if I work in Lithuania?
No. If you are employed or self-employed here, 6.98 percent of your gross salary goes to compulsory health insurance and you are covered by the state system. Private clinics are something you can pay for appointment by appointment; a second insurance policy is rarely worth it on top of PSD unless your employer is paying for it or you need cover that works outside Lithuania.
Can I use a private clinic for free if I have PSD?
Often, yes. Northway, Hila and Meliva all hold contracts with the territorial health insurance fund. If you are registered with that clinic for primary care, the state settles your family medicine there exactly as it would at a municipal polyclinic. For a specialist you also need a referral from your family doctor. Without registration or without a referral you are a private payer at the clinic's list price.
How much does a private doctor's appointment cost in Lithuania?
Northway publishes 80 euros for a family doctor in Vilnius and 60 euros in its other centres, 49 euros for a remote consultation, 80 euros for a neurologist, 55 euros for a gynaecologist and 50 euros for a urologist. Hila publishes 89 euros for a family doctor consultation for an unregistered patient and 97 euros for a neurologist. Baltic-American Clinic publishes 80 euros for a GP and 90 euros for a gynaecologist. There is no national private tariff, so the same specialty varies by half across clinics.
What does the state pay a clinic for the same appointment?
The Compulsory Health Insurance Fund settles a level II specialist consultation at 25.05 euros, and 30.70 euros for endocrinology, cardiology, haematology and paediatric specialties. A remote consultation is 17.06 euros and a level III consultation runs from 42.85 to 56.57 euros. That is roughly a third of what the same clinic charges a private payer, and the gap is what the private market sells.
Which Lithuanian private clinics publish their prices?
Northway, Hila and Baltic-American Clinic all publish full euro price lists on their own sites, service by service. Meliva prices through its booking flow rather than as a single published table, so ask when you book. Northway's list is the most complete and is the only one that also tags each doctor with the languages they consult in.
How do I find a doctor who speaks English?
Northway tags every doctor profile with the languages they consult in, so you can filter before booking. Baltic-American Clinic in Vilnius runs entirely in English and issues its medical summaries and invoices in English or Russian. Hila and Meliva publish Lithuanian-first sites and do not tag doctors by language, so ask the receptionist. Book by email where you can, state that the consultation must be in English, and keep the reply.
How long will I wait to see a specialist?
In the public system, a 2025 survey for LRT found 32 percent of people waited two to four weeks, 20 percent waited two to three months and 12 percent were seen within a week. No private clinic publishes a waiting time, so ask for the first available slot when you call. The Compulsory Health Insurance Fund publishes real queue data by specialist from the pre-registration system, refreshed monthly, covering state-funded services only.
Do I need a referral to see a private specialist?
Not to be seen โ you can book any specialist privately and pay for it. You need a referral from the family doctor you are registered with if you want the state to pay. Going without a referral is one of the situations the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund specifically names as a case where the patient pays.
What happened to Kardiolita, InMedica and SK Impeks?
Kardiolita and InMedica have both been merged into the Meliva brand and their old web addresses redirect there. SK Impeks Medicinos diagnostikos centras now trades as Hila. If you were given a recommendation before the rebrands, the clinic is probably still there โ the name over the door is not.
Can a private clinic charge me a top-up for a state-funded service?
Only in defined situations, and it must be documented. The Fund allows a charge where you choose a more expensive medicine, material or technology than the funded one, where you choose a specific doctor on your own initiative, or where the service is on the official paid list. Whatever you are charged for must be recorded in your medical documents and confirmed by the doctor's signature before you consent. Courts have ordered clinics to refund co-payments taken without a basis.
Is dentistry covered?
Partly, and less than people expect. Basic dental care such as fillings and extractions is covered through your primary care provider, but you pay for the medicines and filling materials unless you are under 24 and in education or in a socially vulnerable category. Fissure sealants are free for children aged 6 to 14. Prosthetics are compensated only for pensioners, under-18s, people with disabilities and cancer patients, with caps from 342 to 2,063 euros and a three-year gap before a repeat. Implants are on the paid list.
Will a private clinic bill my foreign insurer directly?
Sometimes. Northway states that it accepts policies from more than 17 Lithuanian and foreign insurers, including the international names foreign employers commonly use. Confirm direct settlement before the appointment rather than assuming it โ otherwise you pay up front and claim back. Baltic-American Clinic issues its medical summary and invoice in English or Russian, which is what most foreign insurers need to process a claim.
Register First, Then Decide What to Pay For
Registering with a family doctor costs nothing and makes most routine care free, whether the clinic is private or public. Everything on this page is a decision you make afterwards.
Related Guides
Disclaimer
General guidance, not medical advice. Clinic prices are list prices read from each clinic's own published page and change without notice; the price you are quoted at booking is the one that binds. Confirm cover with the clinic and with the territorial health insurance fund before relying on anything here for a decision about treatment.