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Norway: emergency care, hospitals and waiting rules
The one country in the region where the ambulance is not 112, a regular GP assigned to every resident, and a right to treatment expressed as an individual deadline rather than a national number.
Medical emergency: 113Police: 112Fire: 110Out-of-hours doctor: 116117
This page explains how the system works. It is not a diagnosis, it cannot tell you how urgent your own situation is, and it is not a directory: it carries no clinic addresses, opening hours or visiting times, because those change and a wrong one sends you to a closed door. If someone may be seriously ill or injured, call the emergency number — 112 across the region, 113 for medical emergencies in Norway — and if you are unsure, call your country’s advice line rather than deciding from a web page.
The numbers
| What it is | Number | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Medical emergency | 113 | Ambulance — Norway keeps three separate emergency numbers |
| Police | 112 | Police only |
| Fire | 110 | Fire and rescue |
| Out-of-hours doctor | 116117 | Legevakt: connects you to the service where you are |
113, not 112 — this is the one to memorise
Norway did not merge its emergency numbers. 113 is the medical emergency number and reaches the ambulance service, 112 reaches the police and 110 the fire service. A caller who dials 112 for a cardiac arrest will be transferred rather than refused, but the transfer costs time that a cardiac arrest does not have. Outside your own doctor’s hours, 116117 connects you to the legevakt covering wherever you happen to be standing, which matters in a country where the next municipality can be an hour away.
Everyone has a named GP
The fastlege scheme gives every resident a named regular GP, and that GP is the gatekeeper for planned specialist care. You can change fastlege, and the national health portal is where you do it, along with booking, renewing prescriptions and reading your records. Out of hours the legevakt takes over, and it is a genuinely different service with a different threshold: it is for what cannot wait until the surgery opens, not for everything the surgery does.
Your deadline is set for you, individually
Norway does not publish a single national maximum wait in the way Estonia and Finland do. Instead, when a hospital assesses your referral and decides you need necessary specialist health care, it sets an individual deadline by which that care must start, based on how urgent your condition is. That deadline is yours, it is written down, and if it passes without your treatment starting the health economics administration steps in to arrange the care elsewhere, including privately or abroad, at the state’s expense. The corollary is that a Norwegian waiting time only means something alongside the urgency it was assessed at.
You may choose where to be treated
The free choice of treatment place is not a slogan: the national health portal publishes expected waiting times per hospital and per procedure, and a patient with a referral may pick any public hospital, or a private one under contract, and be treated there at public expense. Travel is partly reimbursed. In practice most people take the local hospital, which is exactly why the ones with capacity keep having it — comparing before you accept the first offer is the single most effective thing a Norwegian patient can do about a wait.
What you pay, and when you stop paying
You pay a co-payment, an egenandel, for GP and legevakt visits and for outpatient hospital care. Children under sixteen pay none. Once your co-payments in a calendar year reach the national ceiling you are issued a frikort automatically and pay nothing further that year for the services it covers. Consumables and medicines are charged separately and are not covered by the frikort. Inpatient hospital treatment carries no co-payment at all — a hospital admission in Norway does not generate a bill for the bed.
Where to check and where to complain
The Directorate of Health sets the professional standards and publishes the national guidance, and the national health portal is the patient-facing side of the same system. Each county has a patient and user ombudsman whose help is free, and Norway has a no-fault patient injury compensation scheme, so a claim for harm does not require proving that anyone was negligent. The records and complaints page sets the Norwegian route next to the others.
Sources: Helsenorge — the national health portal · Norwegian Directorate of Health · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
What number do I call for an ambulance in Norway?
113. Norway keeps three emergency numbers — 110 for fire, 112 for police and 113 for medical emergencies — and 113 is the one that reaches the ambulance service directly. 116117 reaches the out-of-hours doctor for anything that is urgent but not an emergency.
What is a fastlege?
Your assigned regular GP. Every resident is on a fastlege list, the GP is the route to planned specialist care, and you can change to another with an open list through the national health portal.
How long will I wait for an operation in Norway?
There is no single national maximum. The hospital assessing your referral sets an individual deadline based on urgency; if it passes without treatment starting, the health economics administration arranges care elsewhere at public expense. Expected waiting times per hospital are published so you can compare before choosing.
What is a frikort?
An exemption card. Once your co-payments in a calendar year reach the national ceiling, it is issued automatically and you pay no further co-payments that year for the services it covers. Children under sixteen pay no co-payment at all.
The other countries
Estonia
One emergency number, a 24-hour family-doctor line, a hospital network fixed by regulation, and waiting-list maximums that are set in a published decision rather than left to the hospital.
Finland
A national medical helpline you are expected to call before turning up, twenty-two organisers instead of three hundred municipalities, and access limits written into statute with a number for every step.
Sweden
One advice number that doubles as the country’s health website, twenty-one regions running their own care, and a guarantee everyone quotes as four numbers: 0, 3, 90, 90.
Denmark
The country that made phoning ahead compulsory: five regions, five acute numbers, and an emergency department you are expected to be sent to rather than to find.
Latvia
An ambulance service with its own number, a family-doctor line that takes over when the surgeries close, and co-payments that are capped three ways — per hospitalisation, per operation and per year.
Lithuania
Compulsory health insurance that has to be kept current, a family doctor who holds the referral pad, and emergency care that is given whether or not any of that is in order.
All the emergency numbers in one table · Which door to use · Falling ill in another country
Have the answers before the questions
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