What you need to know
- The Health Facility Registry is NHA's digital repository of public and private facilities, and each registered facility receives a 12-digit Health Facility ID.
- Registration takes seven steps on facility.abdm.gov.in, starting with a Healthcare Professional ID for the facility manager.
- District verifiers check state, private and PPP facilities and are told to decide within 30 days of submission.
- CGHS made an HFR ID mandatory for empanelment in December 2025 and requires ABDM M3 compliance within a year.
- The Digital Health Incentive Scheme pays Rs 20 per ABHA-linked transaction above 100 a month, and had paid hospitals over Rs 107 crore by 18 June 2026.
- The Health Ministry put registrations at 5.33 lakh facilities and 9.85 lakh professionals in July 2026, DD News reported.
HFR registration is the process by which a hospital, clinic, laboratory, imaging centre or pharmacy lists itself on the Health Facility Registry of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and receives a unique facility identifier, the HFR ID. For operators the question is no longer whether the registry is useful but when they will be asked for the ID: CGHS has made one mandatory for empanelment, the National Medical Commission has pressed medical colleges to supply it, and the registry is the gateway to ABDM’s incentive payments.
This guide explains who should register, the steps on the official portal, the information required, how verification works, the linked Healthcare Professionals Registry, ABHA record linking, the Digital Health Incentive Scheme and the latest official counts, as of November 2026.
What HFR registration is and who runs it
The registry is run by the National Health Authority (NHA) under ABDM. NHA’s standard operating procedure for verifiers describes it as follows: “Health Facility Registry is a comprehensive digital repository of health facilities of the country”, covering both modern and traditional systems of medicine and both public and private facilities. On submission, according to the HFR verifier SOP, “the facility is assigned a 12-digit Health Facility ID”, which is then used across the ABDM ecosystem.
The same SOP is explicit about what the registry is not: “HFR is not mandated to regulate or set standards for the facilities.” HFR registration does not replace a state clinical establishment licence, pollution control authorisation or any other statutory approval. It is an identity and discovery layer that other schemes and systems can rely on.
The official HFR portal lists what registration offers: a unique facility ID across ABDM, an online listing that patients can search, easier licence renewal and insurance or TPA empanelment, and access to telemedicine, digital health records and hospital management software. NHA’s registration poster gives the national helpline as 14477.
Who should complete HFR registration
The portal says the Health Facility Registry covers hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories, imaging centres and pharmacies, across modern and traditional medicine. In practice, the obligation to hold an HFR ID now arrives through other rules rather than through ABDM itself:
- CGHS-empanelled providers: the CGHS empanelment memorandum of 22 December 2025 says an HFR ID is “mandatory to onboard on HEM portal”, the Hospital Engagement Module used for empanelment.
- Medical colleges and their attached hospitals: the National Medical Commission (NMC) has told institutions to integrate hospital software with ABDM, which requires facility and professional registration.
- Facilities seeking ABDM incentives: the Digital Health Incentive Scheme pays only facilities registered on HFR.
- Government facilities: NHA’s pathways document describes assisted registration for district hospitals and community health centres, and back-end drives using programme data such as PM-JAY.
The first person to register is the facility manager, who must hold a Healthcare Professional ID. NHA’s HFR pathways document describes three routes: self-registration on the website using Aadhaar eKYC, bulk registration through onboarding APIs for integrators and technology partners, and assisted or programme-led registration. Chains can add several facilities at once by uploading the details “as a csv file”.
HFR registration step by step on the official portal
Combining the portal guidance, NHA’s registration poster and the verifier SOP, HFR registration runs in seven steps:
- Get a Healthcare Professional ID. The facility manager creates an HP ID at hprid.abdm.gov.in, using an Aadhaar OTP or a driving licence, according to NHA’s HPR pathways document.
- Log in as facility manager. On facility.abdm.gov.in, log in as the facility manager using the HP ID, as NHA’s poster instructs.
- Search before you create. Search by facility name or by an existing ID such as an AB-PMJAY or NIN code. If the facility already exists, the portal asks you to request assignment from the State or District Admin rather than create a duplicate.
- Register a new facility. If no record exists, choose “Register New Facility”, or “Add Facilities in Bulk” for several sites.
- Complete the form. Enter ownership, system of medicine, facility type and subtype, full address with PIN code and geolocation, contact details, services and infrastructure.
- Upload evidence and sign. Add a photograph of the building and of the signboard and, if available, address proof; review the form and sign it digitally through the C-DAC e-sign facility, as the SOP describes.
- Submit and respond to queries. The application goes to a verifier, who may approve, reject or raise a query, and the facility manager answers any query on the portal.
NHA’s pathways document says registration can take 20 to 30 minutes when the information and documents are ready. There is no registration fee stated on the portal, the poster or the SOP.
Where a state or programme drive has already created the record, the facility manager’s task in HFR registration is to claim that record, not to start again: the portal routes such cases to the State or District Admin, and the SOP tells verifiers not to approve duplicates.
Information and documents for an HFR ID
The verifier SOP divides the HFR registration form into mandatory and optional fields. The table summarises them.
| Field | Status | Note from the SOP or pathways document |
|---|---|---|
| Facility manager name and contact | Mandatory | Linked to the manager’s HP ID |
| Facility name and ownership | Mandatory | Central government ownership sends the case to a National Verifier |
| System of medicine, type and subtype | Mandatory | Covers modern and traditional systems |
| Country, state, district, sub-district, address line 1, PIN | Mandatory | Verifiers may check the address on maps or a search engine |
| Geographic location | Mandatory | Verifiers view it on an enlarged map |
| Building and signboard photographs | Optional in the SOP | Pathways document says two photographs are required |
| Address proof | Optional | “Self-certified if not filled” |
The two NHA documents differ on photographs: the SOP lists them as optional uploads, while the pathways document says “Facility will be required to upload two photographs”. Operators should upload both to avoid queries. The SOP does not ask for a state registration certificate, but schemes that rely on the HFR ID, such as CGHS empanelment, ask for registration certificates separately.
How HFR verification works and how long it takes
Verification is done by state and central officials, not by NHA. The SOP sets out a hierarchy:
- District Verifiers: “DV will verify all healthcare facilities present in their respective district”, which covers state-owned, private and PPP facilities.
- National Verifiers: “NV will verify the healthcare facilities owned by central government ministry irrespective of the location.”
- Nodal officers: District and National Nodal Officers supervise verifiers, handle training and approve facility transfers.
- Appointments: State Mission Directors appoint district verifiers and nodal officers; central ministries appoint national ones.
The SOP says verifiers should decide to verify or reject an application “within 30 days of their submission”. NHA emails verifiers about pending facilities and flags cases older than 30 days. District nodal officers review verifiers weekly and State Mission Directors monthly.
The SOP tells verifiers to raise a query for any discrepancy before rejecting, not to reject for missing optional fields, not to verify where the address does not match the map, and not to approve duplicates. A verifier who rejects must give a valid reason and notify NHA with the HFR ID. Address mismatches, duplicate records and missing location data are therefore the main causes of delay that operators can control.
The Healthcare Professionals Registry and the HP ID
The Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) is the companion registry for clinicians, and the HP ID is what a facility manager uses to log in to HFR. NHA’s HPR pathways document says each registered professional receives a unique 14-digit HP ID, and that verified professionals can use telemedicine, review digital records and access services such as licence renewal and digital signatures.
There are two routes. In the first, a professional selects their registration council, enters their registration number and category, confirms the details shown and verifies with Aadhaar. In the second, they first create an HP ID with an Aadhaar OTP or a driving licence, then log in to the Healthcare Professionals Registry; driving licence users must visit their council for verification. Both routes end with a profile in three parts, personal, registration and academic, and work details, which is e-signed and submitted.
The document says “Verification is done by the respective council and the state (work) verifier” and that “There is no fee for registration in the Healthcare Professionals Registry.” Professionals registered with a council but not practising can also enrol. Because HFR registration starts from an HP ID, enrolling the facility manager in the Healthcare Professionals Registry is the first practical task for any facility. For hospitals, HPR matters twice over: the facility manager needs an HP ID, and the CGHS empanelment memorandum requires the HPR ID of every consultant, including visiting consultants, to be entered on its HEM portal.
Linking records to ABHA after HFR registration
An HFR ID is the starting point for creating records linked to a patient’s Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA). NHA’s Scan and Share playbook says “the hospital needs to register itself in HFR and register all its professionals in the HPR” before launching the service, which lets patients share their ABHA details by scanning a QR code at registration instead of filling forms.
The playbook recommends an ABDM-enabled, preferably cloud-hosted hospital management system with token generation, queue management and UHID to ABHA linking, one or two dedicated counters to start, QR standees in the outpatient area, a facilitation desk for patients without smartphones, and fibre internet with redundancy. It says ABHA “will work as the common identifier across healthcare facilities”.
Scale has grown fast. A PIB backgrounder dated 6 July 2026 says over 23.21 crore ABHA-linked tokens had been issued at facilities through Scan and Share as on 18 June 2026, and that over 104 crore health records were linked to over 93 crore ABHA accounts. Software integration is measured in milestones: the NMC’s March 2026 letter describes M1 to M4 as ABHA creation and verification, record linking, consent-based sharing, and creation and verification of professionals and facilities.
The Digital Health Incentive Scheme
The Digital Health Incentive Scheme (DHIS) pays facilities and digital solution companies for ABHA-linked transactions. NHA’s financial incentive policy, generated on 7 December 2022, set an initial outlay of Rs 50 crore, and a first corrigendum of 16 March 2023 says the scheme was launched effective 1 January 2023. The current terms come from that policy and two corrigenda.
| Element | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Eligibility | All facilities on the Health Facility Registry, whatever their bed count; virtual facilities excluded | Corrigendum 1, March 2023 |
| Threshold | More than 100 eligible transactions a month | Corrigendum 1 |
| Facility incentive | Rs 20 per transaction above 100 | Corrigendum 1 |
| Software company incentive | Rs 5 per transaction above 100 | Corrigendum 1 |
| Per patient cap | 1 transaction a day and 5 a month per ABHA address | Corrigendum 1 |
| Minimum payout | Paid only when cumulative incentive exceeds Rs 2,500 | Corrigendum 1 |
| Maximum | Rs 4 crore per facility or software company | Policy, December 2022 |
| Pharmacies | Eligible for transactions on systems integrated up to M2 | Corrigendum 2, July 2023 |
| Tax | No TDS for government bodies; 10% with PAN, 20% without for others | Corrigendum 2 |
Corrigendum 1 also made Scan and Share tokens count as transactions and gave the example that 500 transactions in a month earn Rs 8,000 for the facility and Rs 2,000 for its software company. Corrigendum 2 of 29 July 2023 extended incentives to transactions up to 31 December 2023 “or till funds for DHIS are available”. Digital Health News reported in 2024 that the scheme had been extended to 30 June 2025; it cited no official notice.
The scheme is still paying. The July 2026 PIB backgrounder reports DHIS payments as on 18 June 2026 of over Rs 107 crore to hospitals, Rs 2.95 crore to diagnostics, laboratories and pharmacies, and over Rs 26 crore to digital solution companies. As of November 2026 the HFR portal states that DHIS registration is live; the current end date was not stated on the portal or in the backgrounder.
How many facilities have an HFR ID
The dated counts below come from PIB, Parliament and, for the most recent figures, the Health Ministry as reported by DD News, the public broadcaster. Earlier figures count verified facilities; later ones count registered facilities, so the two are not directly comparable.
| Date | Source | Facilities | Professionals | ABHA accounts | Linked records |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Feb 2024 | PIB factsheet | About 2.35 lakh verified | Over 2.84 lakh | 56.67 crore | 34.89 crore |
| 2 Apr 2025 | Lok Sabha reply | Not stated nationally | Not stated nationally | Over 76 crore | Over 52 crore |
| 28 Jul 2025 | Lok Sabha reply, reported by PTI | About 4.17 lakh | Not clear in report | 79.71 crore | About 65.09 crore |
| 10 Jul 2026 | Health Ministry, reported by DD News | 5.33 lakh | 9.85 lakh | Over 93.95 crore | Over 105 crore |
The February 2024 PIB factsheet split the verified facilities into 69,633 private and over 1.66 lakh government. A Lok Sabha reply of 4 April 2025 gave state detail, for example 6,515 facilities on HFR and 8,202 professionals on HPR in Tamil Nadu as on 2 April 2025. PTI reported on 1 August 2025 that about 4.17 lakh facilities were on the Health Facility Registry and 3,20,973 facilities were using ABDM-enabled software.
DD News reported on 10 July 2026, as Union Health Minister JP Nadda chaired the third meeting of the Mission Steering Group, that 5.33 lakh facilities and 9.85 lakh professionals were registered on the national digital health registries and 2.72 lakh facilities had adopted ABDM-enabled software, according to the Health Ministry. Indian Pharma Post reported the same figures; we did not find a PIB release giving them. On those figures, roughly half of registered facilities had ABDM-enabled software, which is the step that generates linked records.
What HFR registration means for hospitals, labs and vendors
For hospitals that treat government beneficiaries, the HFR ID is now a condition of business. Besides requiring the ID to apply, the CGHS empanelment memorandum of 22 December 2025 requires hospitals to reach at least ABDM M3 compliance within a year of empanelment and gives a 20% reduction in the performance bank guarantee to applicants already at M3, a saving of up to Rs 5 lakh on a Rs 25 lakh guarantee. The agreement adds that the HFR ID “must be provided in the empanelment application and kept active”, which makes a lapsed or duplicate HFR registration a contractual problem as well as a data one.
For medical colleges, the NMC’s letter of 3 March 2026 directed institutions to integrate the hospital management systems of attached hospitals with the ABDM-HMIS portal “within 15 days”, through an ABDM-enabled vendor, a Bridge ID and linking via the NHPR portal. Medical Dialogues reported on 18 July 2026 that an NMC memorandum of 17 July 2026 listed colleges that had not submitted HFR IDs, or had submitted incorrect ones, as one of three categories of non-compliance, and warned that the Medical Assessment and Rating Board may take further action.
For software vendors, ABDM certification is the entry ticket: the NMC letter lists sandbox registration, the M1 to M4 milestones, third-party functional testing, a CERT-In security assessment and Health Tech Committee certification. DHIS payments to digital solution companies, over Rs 26 crore by June 2026, show the incentive at stake. Our Digital health section tracks how states are building on the stack, including Kerala’s planned health data grid and the growth of eSanjeevani.
What to watch next
- DHIS terms: registration is live, but the end date and any revised rates have not been published on the portal; watch for an NHA notice.
- CGHS M3 deadlines: hospitals empanelled under the 2025 memorandum face a one-year clock to reach M3.
- NMC enforcement: whether the Medical Assessment and Rating Board acts on colleges with missing HFR IDs.
- Verification capacity: the 30-day target depends on state verifiers; operators should track application status after submission.
- Software adoption: the gap between registered facilities and facilities using ABDM-enabled software is the next measure of progress.
We log ABDM notices and deadlines on The Tracker.
Questions readers ask
What is HFR registration?
HFR registration is the listing of a health facility on the Health Facility Registry of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, run by the National Health Authority. The facility receives a 12-digit Health Facility ID used across ABDM. The registry covers public and private facilities in modern and traditional medicine, but it does not regulate facilities or replace state licences.
How do I register a hospital on HFR?
The facility manager first creates a Healthcare Professional ID, logs in to facility.abdm.gov.in as facility manager. They search for the facility, request assignment if it already exists or register a new one, complete the form with address, geolocation and services, upload photographs, sign digitally and submit for verification.
How long does HFR verification take?
NHA's standard operating procedure tells verifiers to verify or reject an application within 30 days of submission. District Verifiers check state, private and PPP facilities in their district, and National Verifiers check central government facilities. NHA emails verifiers about pending cases and flags those older than 30 days. Queries raised by verifiers must be answered on the portal.
Is there a fee for HFR registration?
No fee is stated in NHA's HFR portal, registration poster or verifier SOP. NHA's pathways document for the Healthcare Professionals Registry says there is no fee for professional registration. Schemes that require an HFR ID, such as CGHS empanelment, charge their own application fees separately.
Is an HFR ID mandatory?
ABDM does not make it a general legal requirement, but other rules do. CGHS says an HFR ID is mandatory to apply on its Hospital Engagement Module portal, and the National Medical Commission has directed medical colleges to integrate attached hospitals with ABDM. Only facilities on the registry can claim Digital Health Incentive Scheme payments.
How much does the Digital Health Incentive Scheme pay?
Under NHA's March 2023 corrigendum, a registered facility earns Rs 20 for each ABHA-linked transaction above 100 a month, and its software company Rs 5. Payments are made once the cumulative incentive exceeds Rs 2,500, up to Rs 4 crore per facility. PIB reported over Rs 107 crore paid to hospitals by 18 June 2026.
What is the difference between HFR and HPR?
The Health Facility Registry lists facilities and issues a 12-digit facility ID. The Healthcare Professionals Registry lists clinicians and issues a 14-digit HP ID, with verification by the professional's council and a state verifier. A facility manager needs an HP ID to register a facility, and CGHS requires the HPR IDs of all consultants on its empanelment portal.
Sources
Announced plans, figures and dates are as stated in the sources below at the time of publication and can change. Conclusions drawn from them are our reading.
- National Health Authority: Health Facility Registry portal (accessed November 2026)
- National Health Authority: Health Facility Registry, Standard Operating Procedures for Verifiers (PDF, undated)
- National Health Authority: HFR steps to register and its benefits (poster) (PDF)
- National Health Authority: HFR pathways (PDF)
- National Health Authority: HPR pathways (PDF)
- National Health Authority: Scan and Share playbook (PDF)
- National Health Authority: Financial incentive policy for ABDM adoption (DHIS) (PDF, December 2022)
- National Health Authority: Corrigendum 1 to the Digital Health Incentive Scheme (PDF, 16 March 2023)
- National Health Authority: Corrigendum 2 to the Digital Health Incentive Scheme (PDF, 29 July 2023)
- PIB: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, India's Digital Health Backbone (PDF backgrounder, 6 July 2026)
- PIB: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission factsheet (29 February 2024)
- Lok Sabha: Unstarred question 5606 on ABDM in Tamil Nadu (PDF, answered 4 April 2025)
- National Medical Commission: Implementation of HMIS for attached hospitals (PDF, 3 March 2026)
- CGHS: Office memorandum F.No. 5-34/CGHS/HEC(HQ)/2025 on fresh empanelment (copy hosted by SNPWA) (PDF, 22 December 2025)
- The Week (PTI): 79.71 crore ABHA accounts created, govt to Lok Sabha (1 August 2025)
- DD News: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission emerges as one of world's largest digital health ecosystems with over 93.95 crore ABHA IDs (10 July 2026)
- Indian Pharma Post: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission crosses 93.95 crore ABHA IDs (10 July 2026)
- Medical Dialogues: NMC flags non-compliant medical colleges over mandatory ABDM-HMIS integration, warns of action (18 July 2026)
- Digital Health News: New govt extends Digital Health Incentive Scheme by another year (2024)
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