My impression of the medical system (both here in Germany, and through reports from the US) is that it's very much like everything else: much is crap, much is mediocre, some good, and a very small, excellent sliver.

This goes for doctors, drugs, surgeries, devices.

If you want good results, you really have to take matters into your own hands, search for possible treatments yourself, evaluate several doctors until you find a competent one, research possible adverse side effects yourself etc.

Example: somebody in my family had two different surgeries by non-standard methods that gave her significant advantages over the regular methods; one of them offered (to our knowledge) in only one hospital in Germany, the other in three. In both cases her regular doctors didn't know about these methods, and were really surprised to hear about them afterwards. In both cases, she learned about these methods through some non-medical channel (a relative read about it in a newspaper, stuff like that).

If you just go to the next specialist for the field you need, chances are you don't get the optimal treatment, and the rarer the disease, the less like you get a good treatment.