Hospitals in Okinawa

Okinawa is an easy place to come to harm and a slow one to be treated in, and the reason is mostly geography. The island is long and thin, the hospitals that matter are strung along it rather than gathered in one city, and the drive from a beach in the north to a hospital in the south takes far longer than anyone expects. The medicine is good and the ambulance is free. What catches visitors out is the process: a large Japanese hospital expects a referral letter from a clinic, charges a surcharge to anyone who arrives without one, takes first-time patients on weekday mornings only, and shuts at weekends and over the New Year — and the city hospital in Naha closes on 23 June, Okinawa Memorial Day, as well.

So this page is not a list of Okinawa’s best hospitals. It is three a visitor can realistically be seen at, deliberately spread along the island: the city hospital in Naha, the university hospital at Ginowan that covers the middle of the island and holds its hyperbaric unit, and the prefectural hospital in Nago for anyone staying up by Motobu and the aquarium. The prefecture also runs a free line for foreign visitors, the Okinawa Medical Interpretation Support Center on 0570-050-235, which two of the three hospitals publish: it takes calls about illness and injury around the clock in several languages and points you at somewhere that can deal with you. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026; in an emergency, 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 anything serious — an accident, a collapse, a diving injury — the answer is in the middle of the island. University of the Ryukyus Hospital at Ginowan runs a critical care centre 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, tells travellers in its own English that the emergency room is where they should come, and holds the hyperbaric unit that treats decompression sickness. If you are staying in Naha or around Kokusai-dori, or you simply need to be understood at the desk, Naha City Hospital is a minute from the monorail and states that it holds JMIP accreditation for foreign patients. North of the middle of the island — Nago, Motobu, the Churaumi aquarium — it is Okinawa Prefectural Hokubu Hospital. In a real emergency, call 119 and let the crew choose.

What will it cost?

More than a visitor expects, because Japan’s national health insurance covers residents and not you: a traveller is a self-paying patient and owes the whole bill rather than the thirty per cent a resident pays. Two of the three go further. The university hospital bills a foreign patient with no valid Japanese insurance at 200 per cent of the standard rate plus tax, which it explains as the cost of multilingual support, and Naha City Hospital charges uninsured patients at its own schedule. On top sits the surcharge for arriving without a referral letter — 7,700 yen including tax at Naha City and at the university hospital, 7,000 yen at Hokubu — and Naha City charges the same 7,700 yen again for an out-of-hours emergency visit it judges was not urgent. The ambulance is free. What follows the ride is not.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

Assume you will pay and claim. Naha City Hospital states that overseas and private medical insurance cannot be used and that you must claim the money back yourself; it takes yen in cash or by credit card and will not take electronic money. The only direct-billing arrangement any of the three publishes is at the university hospital, and it is narrow: TRICARE Prime and defence-affiliated patients through International SOS. Everyone else pays in full, up front. Take your passport, your policy number and a list of your medication under its generic name, ring the assistance line on your policy before you go rather than after, and ask for an itemised receipt on the day. An English medical certificate is a separate document that costs money — 8,800 yen to translate at the university hospital — so ask for it early.

Getting there and ambulances

The ambulance number is 119. The call and the ride cost nothing, the crew decide which hospital takes you, and the referral rule stops applying the moment you are in the back of one — Hokubu says exactly that in English, that a letter is not needed at night, on holidays or in an emergency. Otherwise Okinawa is a driving island. The monorail serves Naha alone, where it stops a minute from Naha City Hospital; everywhere else means a hire car, a taxi or an intercity bus. The university hospital publishes its own times from Naha Airport — about forty-five minutes by taxi, or buses 25, 125 and 294 to a stop at its front door. Typhoons close clinics at short notice. If you are unsure whether it is an emergency, #7119 gives advice.

Diving, the outer islands and getting to Naha

Okinawa is Japan’s diving centre, and the recompression question has a real answer here. The University of the Ryukyus Hospital at Ginowan runs a hyperbaric treatment department that names decompression sickness among the conditions it treats, and its emergency department lists it too; one doctor heads both. The way in is the emergency room, not the hyperbaric unit, which takes outside patients only on a referral from the department treating them. The hospital publishes neither the chamber’s class nor its out-of-hours cover, so ask your dive operator which chamber they use before you get in the water. On the islands, Ishigaki has Okinawa Prefectural Yaeyama Hospital and Miyako-jima has Okinawa Prefectural Miyako Hospital, both with English pages; the Kerama islands have village clinics only. Yaeyama is candid in its own English: open around the clock, but the doctor may not be a specialist, treatment may be temporary, and for some symptoms you may not be treated there at all.

Pharmacies

Two different shops, and the difference matters. A pharmacy proper — look for the word yakkyoku — dispenses prescriptions, and usually sits next door to the clinic or hospital that wrote them. The drugstore chains along Kokusai-dori and inside the shopping centres sell painkillers, cold and stomach remedies, plasters, insect repellent and rehydration drinks, and many stay open late. Antibiotics are prescription-only in Japan, so a drugstore cannot settle an infection, and a fever that will not break needs a doctor. Heat is the local hazard: the island is hot and humid for most of the year, and the commonest reason a visitor feels suddenly awful is dehydration rather than anything exotic. Bring your own medication in its original box with the prescription, and check before you fly, because Japan bars some perfectly ordinary cold and sinus ingredients outright.

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

Travel information, not medical advice.

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