Loading What a trip for treatment costs you…
Work out what you actually pay to travel for a hospital appointment, what comes back, and what to bring when you claim it.
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What you actually paid, before anything you claim back.
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Akureyri has a hospital, and it does not do everything. People from the whole of Eyjafjörður fly or drive to Reykjavík for a specialist appointment, and the travel is the part nobody budgets for — when Isavia proposed charging for parking at the airport, the argument locals made in print was that it amounted to a charge on getting medical care.
Most of that travel is paid back. Sjúkratryggingar Íslands reimburse two-thirds of the fare on four journeys a calendar year, and your own share is capped: never more than 1.500 kr. for a journey there and back, whatever the flight cost. Below is that arithmetic against the regulation in force, with every line of it shown.
Nothing caps the fare: an expensive flight is absorbed above your own capped share. Icelandair price the Akureyri–Reykjavík flight by availability, so there is no fixed figure anyone can fill in for you.
For a serious illness there is no limit of four. The regulation names malignant disease, kidney failure, serious heart disease, serious illness in children, serious mental illness, serious problems in pregnancy, fertility treatment and dental treatment among the grounds. The money works the same way, but two things change. You need a «Skýrsla vegna ferðakostnaðar», the form a doctor or midwife fills in, and Sjúkratryggingar expect to have decided before you travel, except in an emergency. And flights are limited — «Endurgreiðsla flugferða takmarkast því við hámark tvær flugferðir á hverjum sjö dögum», at most two flights in any seven days, with the regulation asking you to use the sjúkrahótel in the treatment town to keep the number of trips down. A repeated journey means, as a rule, two journeys in four weeks or less.
In regular haemodialysis at least twice a week, Sjúkratryggingar pay 95% of an agreed taxi journey up to 100 km, and those journeys come on top of the four. The 100 km was 60 km until reglugerð 555/2025 raised it in May 2025. The consolidated text on island.is still shows the old number, so if anyone quotes 60 to you, the amendment is the answer.
If treatment keeps you away for 26 days or more, the regulation covers a journey home every other weekend. Under 18, every weekend.
Akureyri is inside Loftbrú, the state's air-fare discount for people living away from the capital area — postcodes 600 to 607 qualify. It takes 40% off the fare on up to six flight legs, three return trips, a year on scheduled routes to and from the capital area, and it excludes flights taken for business, which a hospital appointment is not. What neither scheme's published terms say is how the two fit together: whether Sjúkratryggingar work their two-thirds out on the discounted fare or the full one. Because your own share is capped either way it rarely changes what you pay, but it changes what comes back, so ask if the figure matters.
On a scheduled flight, ferry or bus, a companion's fare is paid too — if you are under 18, or not able to travel on your own. A woman travelling to give birth always has a companion's fare paid. There is no companion rate for your own car. The detail worth knowing: the cap is worked out on your cost and the companion's added together, so it is still 1.500 kr. between the two of you, not each.
Sjúkrahótel Landspítalans in Reykjavík costs 1.890 kr. a night and Sjúkratryggingar do not pay it. That is yours, and it is not in the figure above. The exception is a parent staying with a child under 18 who is an inpatient: 80% of the stay is reimbursed, but never more than half the sjúkrahótel day rate, and never more than 75% between two parents. Coming the other way, someone sent to Akureyri for treatment can be put up at Hótel Akureyri, Gistihúsið Hrafninn or Heilsuvernd's sjúkraíbúðir at the same 1.890 kr. a night with full board, for up to 21 days, on a referral.
There is no twelve-month deadline, whatever you may have been told. The limit sits in the Act rather than the regulation: «Bætur skulu aldrei ákvarðaðar lengra aftur í tímann en tvö ár» — nothing is awarded more than two years back from the day your claim and its papers reach them. The twelve months is a different rule altogether: once an award has been decided, it lapses if you do not collect it within a year, and it can be decided again on a reasoned application.
Greiðsluþátttaka í ferðakostnaði innanlands
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The regulation's words are «Greiðsluhluti sjúkratryggðs skal þó aldrei verða hærri en kr. 1.500 í hverri ferð» — your share shall never become higher than 1.500 kr. per journey — and Sjúkratryggingar spell out that a journey means there and back. Once your own share of travel passes 10.000 kr. in a calendar year the cap drops to 500 kr. for the rest of that year, and the count starts again on 1 January. One honest caveat: the regulation does not say in so many words that the 10.000 kr. counts travel costs only. It reads that way from the sentence before it, and that is how this page treats it, but if it matters to your case, ask Sjúkratryggingar.
Four journeys a calendar year on this route. It was two until 1 January 2024 and three until 1 July 2024, so older advice you come across will be wrong. Past the fourth, the repeated-journeys rules below take over.
The road distances here come from Vegagerðin's own table of distances between places, content dated 14 December 2023. Sjúkratryggingar work out their own distance, and that is the figure they pay on. The Húsavík number is by Vaðlaheiðargöng; over Víkurskarð it is about 16 km further, and the tunnel toll is claimed separately on its own receipt.
You pay at most kr 1.500 a trip
4 trips a calendar year