If you have applied for Norwegian healthcare authorisation and your emails have gone unanswered, you have probably concluded one of two things: that your case has been forgotten, or that you are being ignored personally. Neither is right. Helsedirektoratet has a written policy on this, and it publishes the numbers behind it. The headline one is worth knowing before anything else: for applicants educated outside the EU/EEA, the stated processing time is 23 months.
Last reviewed 30 July 2026. Sources: Helsedirektoratet — Gebyr, saksbehandlingstid, vedtak og klage (last professional revision 26 May 2026); Helsedirektoratet — Tilleggskrav for søkere utdannet utenfor EU/EØS; Helsedirektoratet — Verifisering av dokumentasjon utstedt i Pakistan; Forskrift om gebyr, FOR-2023-02-09-190 § 2.
The published processing times
These are Helsedirektoratet’s own figures, by country of education:
| Educated in | Processing time |
|---|---|
| Norway | 3 months |
| Norway, via the institution’s notification list | Answered automatically and immediately |
| EU/EEA | 3 months |
| Outside the EU/EEA | 23 months |
| United Kingdom | 3 months |
If you completed your education across more than one country, the time is based on where you did your primary education.
Twenty-three months is not a typo and it is not a worst case — it is the stated figure, and Helsedirektoratet notes it applies to applications already received as well as new ones. If you are eight months in and have heard nothing, you are not late in the queue. You are early in it.
The directorate is also explicit about what that number contains. Processing time means the whole span from receipt to decision, and most of it is waiting rather than active work — applications queue, documents take time to verify, and additional information has to be requested and returned. Two people who applied the same day can legitimately get answers months apart, because cases differ in complexity and in how much verification they need.
Other published times worth knowing
- Documenting completed tilleggskrav: 3 months — and these are prioritised (see below)
- Authorisation after a completed trial period for EEA-educated applicants, or after complementary education for dentists and nurses: 3 months
- Exemption from tilleggskrav: the two Helsedirektoratet pages differ. The tilleggskrav page states up to 6 months for a request sent by email. The processing-times page states it is handled concurrently with the authorisation application.
- Extending the three-year tilleggskrav deadline: 3 months
- Appealing a decision: up to 4 months
- CCPS, over-80 licence, reinstatement in HPR: 8 weeks each
- Student licence: 3 months
- Fagområdelisens: 4 months
The silence is a stated policy
Helsedirektoratet’s page sets this out directly. All case handling is done in writing. Enquiries by telephone or email will not lead to faster processing. And then the sentence that explains what people are experiencing:
Enquiries whose purpose is to follow up an application without providing new information, before the stated processing time has elapsed, will not be answered.
The reason given is that the directorate would rather spend the time processing applications than answering messages that do not concern the substance of a case.
You can disagree with that policy. But it is a policy, published in advance — not your case being lost, and not a judgement about you. If you have sent three emails and heard nothing, that is the system behaving exactly as documented.
The corollary is practical. An email that does contain new information — a document they asked for, a change of address, a correction — is a different category and is worth sending. An email asking “any update?” before the processing time has run is not.
Five things that explicitly do not move you up the queue
Helsedirektoratet lists these by name as not grounds for prioritisation:
- A visa or residence permit application with UDI
- Admission to kurs i nasjonale fag
- Admission to the fagprøve
- A concrete job offer
- Private reasons
The job-offer one is worth dwelling on, because it is the most common thing people try. An employer waiting for you does not change your position. Nor does an immigration deadline — Helsedirektoratet and UDI are separate bodies running separate processes, and pressure in one does not transfer to the other.
What genuinely does change your position
Since chasing does not work, it is worth knowing what does.
Three years’ full professional rights in another EEA country. This is the strongest lever on this page, and it does two separate things. It can exempt you from the additional requirements altogether, and from ECFMG verification. And on timing: if you send documentation of it to the directorate, your application is handled under the EEA rules — normally three months from when Helsedirektoratet receives the necessary documentation, against a 23-month baseline. If it describes you, send it.
Completing your tilleggskrav within the three-year deadline. Applicants who were told to complete additional requirements and who document completing them inside the deadline are explicitly prioritised, with those cases handled continuously and within three months.
Sending exactly what was asked for, promptly. Where documentation is missing, the extra time is counted from when they notify you until they receive what they asked for. That portion of the delay is the only part genuinely inside your control.
Applying for a deadline extension early if you will need one. The extension application itself takes three months to process, so leaving it to the final month risks the decision arriving after the deadline has already passed.
Verification, and the Pakistan backlog
Document verification is a general part of this process, not something specific to any one country. Helsedirektoratet may ask you to verify documents through a verification agency, or to have them sent directly from your employer or institution. It uses DataFlow Group, and notes that verification through DataFlow can cost you extra. If you already hold a DataFlow report issued to another authority, you can use the “Reissue Existing Report” option — but you must still verify anything Helsedirektoratet requires that you have not verified before. Send the report without password protection.
If your education is from Pakistan, you are not imagining the wait. Helsedirektoratet states on its own site that because of a large number of incoming applications and difficulties verifying documents, assessing applications from applicants educated in Pakistan has taken a long time. It says processing of all of them has begun, and that applicants must still expect long processing times. That is the regulator acknowledging the problem in its own words — it does not shorten anyone’s wait, but when you explain the delay to an employer or to yourself, you are describing something documented rather than suspected.
If the decision goes against you
The appeal deadline is three weeks from receiving the decision, submitted through Altinn with your case number, what you are appealing, why, and documentation of anything new. Someone else can appeal on your behalf; if they are not a lawyer you need to give them written authority.
Helsedirektoratet reassesses the case itself first, taking up to four months. If it maintains its decision, the appeal goes on to Nasjonalt klageorgan for helsetjenesten. Do not send a second appeal form if you have more to add — email it to the directorate quoting the appeal’s case number.
A refusal is not always the end. Where the shortfall can be closed by qualifying measures, you are told so, and you can reapply once you have completed them — which is exactly how the complementary education route for nurses works.
Where language fits
There is one thing you can do during the wait that nobody has to approve, that no queue governs, and that no processing time constrains: learn Norwegian.
This matters more once you put the two clocks side by side. For applicants educated outside the EU/EEA, the wait for a first decision is around two years — and the three-year deadline for completing the additional requirements only starts after that decision arrives. The language requirement can be met before you ever apply, and it gates admission to everything else, because the national-subjects course, medication handling and the professional examination are all conducted in Norwegian.
So the months spent waiting are not dead time unless you let them be. They are the only part of this process where effort converts directly into progress without anyone else’s decision. Getting the order right is worth more here than in almost any other part of the system.
B2 is the level the framework is built around, and which side of the EU/EEA line you fall on determines whether it is a formal requirement or an employer expectation. Speaking is the hardest part to judge from the inside, because it is the only skill you cannot rehearse silently. Practising it out loud against exam-style prompts is what muntligb1.com is built for.