Hospitals in Hiroshima

Hiroshima is a compact, flat, tram-shaped city, and a visitor taken ill in it is rarely more than twenty minutes from a hospital that can help. The difficulty is neither distance nor the standard of the medicine. It is the front door: a large Japanese hospital expects you to arrive with a referral letter from a local clinic, charges a fixed surcharge if you have not got one, takes first-time patients on weekday mornings, and works in Japanese. None of the three hospitals here advertises an international desk or a medical interpreter, which is the plain truth about Hiroshima and better learned before you need it than after.

So this page is not a ranking of the city’s hospitals. It is the three a traveller can realistically be seen at, chosen for an emergency department that describes on its own site what it accepts, a published position on arriving without a referral letter, and a location you can reach from where visitors actually stay — the station, the Peace Memorial Park, Hondori, and the Miyajima ferry. Each name opens a full page with the address, the phone numbers, the map and what a visit involves. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026; hours and charges change, so telephone before you set out, and if it is serious, dial 119.

The 3 at a glance

Bed counts are approximate. Tap a name for the full page.

The hospitals

Which hospital should I go to?

For an accident, a collapse or anything frightening in the city centre, go to Hiroshima Citizens Hospital at Motomachi: it is the city’s emergency and critical care centre, it is seven minutes from the Kamiyacho tram stops at the top of Hondori, and its own pages describe an emergency service giving first treatment from primary through tertiary cases. If you have no referral letter and need a doctor today, Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital and Atomic-bomb Survivors Hospital at Sendamachi says outright that you can be seen without one, for a fee, and it has its own stop on the tram line in from Hiroshima Station. If you are out at Miyajima or staying near the ferry, JA Hiroshima General Hospital at Hatsukaichi is the nearest hospital to the island and has a tram stop at its gate. In a life-or-death emergency, call 119 and let the crew choose.

What will it cost?

More than most visitors expect, because Japan’s national health insurance covers residents and not you. A traveller is a self-paying patient and owes the full amount, not the thirty per cent a resident pays. On top of that sits the referral surcharge, and in Hiroshima the three hospitals here all charge the same: 7,700 yen including tax for a first visit made without a letter from a clinic. The Citizens Hospital charges 5,500 yen at its dental departments. None of the three publishes a separate out-of-hours emergency surcharge, which several big-city hospitals do. The ambulance is free, the call is free, and the crew decide where you go; the treatment at the end of the ride is not free, and an admission runs into hundreds of thousands of yen.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

Assume you will pay the hospital yourself and claim afterwards; none of the three offers to bill a foreign insurer directly. Bring more than you think. Hiroshima Red Cross publishes the deposit it collects for a night or holiday emergency consultation — 10,000 or 20,000 yen from most patients, but 100,000 yen from a foreign national with no Japanese public insurance card — and that is probably the single most useful figure on this page. It takes cards at its payment machines between 8:25 and 22:00 but not electronic money or barcode payment; JA Hiroshima takes cash and cards. Ask for an itemised receipt on the day, and ask early about an English medical certificate: the Red Cross says one takes about two weeks to write. Hiroshima’s prefectural international centre runs a volunteer medical-interpreter dispatch, but describes it as a service for foreign residents of the prefecture rather than for visitors.

Getting there and ambulances

Hiroshima is a tram city and the tram is usually the answer. Lines 1, 3 and 7 stop at Nisseki-byoin-mae, two minutes from the Red Cross hospital; the Citizens Hospital is about seven minutes from Kamiyacho-higashi or Kamiyacho-nishi and five from Kencho-mae on the Astram line; JA Hiroshima has a stop of its own, JA Hiroshima Byoin-mae, on the Miyajima line. Trams are slow and crowded on summer weekends and around the anniversary in early August, and a taxi from the station to either central hospital takes about ten minutes. For an emergency, dial 119. The call and the ride cost nothing, the crew decide which hospital takes you, and the referral rule does not apply to them. If you are unsure whether it is an emergency, #7119 gives advice.

Getting seen without a referral letter

The rule catches nearly every visitor. A large Japanese hospital wants you to arrive through a clinic, and adds a selection fee — the 選定療養費 — when you come without the letter that clinic would have written: 7,700 yen at all three hospitals here. A neighbourhood clinic costs far less and writes the letter if you do need a hospital. Of the three, the Red Cross says in its own FAQ that you can be seen without a letter and simply pay the fee; the Citizens Hospital wants a referral and an appointment but takes walk-ins at its emergency reception; JA Hiroshima asks you to telephone first and warns that some departments will not see you without one. Accreditation is no shortcut: the city’s one JMIP-certified hospital, out at Kasumi, says on its own English pages that it cannot accept a first-time patient directly. Miyajima has no hospital at all, only a clinic that shuts on Sundays. In a real emergency none of this matters: 119 bypasses the lot.

Pharmacies

Japanese pharmacies are excellent and strictly regulated, which cuts both ways. The drugstore chains along Hondori and Kamiyacho and under Hiroshima Station sell painkillers, cold and stomach remedies, plasters, insect-bite creams and rehydration drinks, and several stay open late. What they cannot sell you is an antibiotic: those need a doctor’s prescription, dispensed by a separate 薬局 pharmacy, usually the one next door to the clinic that wrote it. Doses are often milder than travellers expect. Bring enough of your own medication for the trip, keep it in its original box with the prescription, and check before you fly, because Japan restricts some ingredients that are ordinary at home, including certain decongestants and codeine-based cough medicines. For a fever that will not break, a head injury or an animal bite, see a doctor rather than a shop.

Hiroshima tourist map / Hospitals in Japan / Japan visa guide / Japan destinations / Hospitals in Japan / All hospitals

Travel information, not medical advice.

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