How to Verify an Indian Hospital’s Accreditation Before Booking

A logo on a website is not proof. It is a picture, and anyone can paste a picture. If you want to check hospital accreditation in India, you need the official register, not the badge. Some hospitals display badges for accreditations that expired years ago. Some show a group-level award that covers a different branch in a different city. A few use phrases like “NABH-compliant” or “built to JCI standards” that sound official but mean nothing at all. If you are travelling to India for surgery, cancer care or a transplant, the badge on the home page is where your checking starts, not where it ends.

The good news is that you can do this yourself, for free, in about ten minutes, using the official registers run by the accrediting bodies. This guide explains what each accreditation actually means, walks you through the NABH and JCI lookups step by step, and shows you what accreditation can and cannot tell you about the care you will receive. It is written for patients and family members in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Iraq, Oman, Bangladesh and everywhere else people travel from for treatment in India.

A quick note: this is general guidance to help you research hospitals. It is not medical advice, and the right hospital for you depends on your diagnosis and your treating doctor’s opinion.

Why You Should Check Hospital Accreditation Yourself

Accreditation is an independent body saying, “We inspected this hospital against a written set of standards, and it passed.” Those standards cover things patients rarely see: how medicines are stored and labelled, how the hospital prevents infections, how it identifies patients before surgery, how it handles emergencies and complaints, and whether staff are trained and credentialed. For an international patient who cannot walk the corridors before deciding, that outside inspection is one of the few objective signals available.

But accreditation has dates, scopes and conditions. It can be suspended. It can lapse during a renewal. It can apply to one building and not the one next door. That is why the only reliable way to confirm it is to look the hospital up on the accrediting body’s own website and compare what you find with what the hospital or agent has told you.

Most of the large hospital groups our patients use, such as Apollo, Fortis, Max, Medanta and Amrita, hold genuine accreditations at their flagship campuses. Even so, we recommend you verify the specific campus you are booking. Habits like this protect you when you are comparing smaller or newer hospitals too.

The Accreditation Alphabet

Indian hospital websites tend to show a row of four logos: NABH, JCI, NABL and ISO. They are not interchangeable. Each one comes from a different body, looks at a different thing, and is verified in a different place.

NABH: India’s national hospital accreditation

NABH stands for the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers. It is a constituent board of the Quality Council of India, and its hospital standards have themselves been accredited by ISQua, the international society that evaluates accrediting bodies. In plain terms, NABH is India’s own hospital accreditation, and it is the one most Indian hospitals pursue first.

NABH assesses the whole hospital against hundreds of measurable elements: patient rights, safe surgery, infection control, medication management, clinical governance and more. The hospital standards are now in their 6th edition, which NABH began assessing against from 1 January 2025. Under the current scheme, hospital accreditation certificates are issued for four years, with a surveillance assessment during the cycle. You may still find older guides or support pages quoting a three-year term, which applied to earlier cycles, so always read the actual “valid from” and “valid until” dates on the certificate rather than assuming.

Two details trip people up. First, NABH runs more than one programme. Full hospital accreditation is different from “entry level” certification, which is a lighter, stepping-stone standard. Both are legitimate, but they are not the same achievement. Second, wording matters. A hospital that is “NABH-accredited” has passed assessment. A hospital that describes itself as “NABH-compliant,” “NABH-ready” or “following NABH guidelines” is telling you it has not.

JCI: the international accreditation

JCI is Joint Commission International, the international arm of The Joint Commission in the United States. It accredits hospitals, academic medical centres, laboratories, ambulatory care, primary care, long-term care, home care and medical transport organisations in many countries. JCI requires organisations to be reaccredited every three years, with a full on-site triennial survey and lighter check-ins between surveys.

Far fewer Indian hospitals hold JCI accreditation than NABH, partly because it is costly and demanding, and partly because NABH is already rigorous and recognised domestically. JCI is useful for international patients because it uses the same framework worldwide. If your insurer or your home government’s referral programme asks for an internationally accredited hospital, JCI is usually what they mean. A hospital without JCI is not automatically a weaker hospital, though. Many excellent Indian centres hold NABH only.

NABL: accreditation for laboratories, not hospitals

NABL is the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories, another board under the Quality Council of India. For healthcare, it accredits medical laboratories against the international standard ISO 15189, which covers the quality and competence of pathology and diagnostic testing. A hospital with an NABL logo has an accredited lab. That matters a great deal, because your blood tests, biopsies, tissue typing for transplant and tumour markers all come from that lab. But NABL says nothing about the operating theatres or the wards.

NABL certificates carry a lab number (often starting “MC-” for medical labs) and a validity period. Recent certificates we have seen run for around four years, while older ones ran for two. Check the dates on the certificate and the scope document listing which tests are covered.

ISO: a management certification, not a clinical one

“ISO” on a hospital website most often means ISO 9001, a general quality management certification used by factories, banks and airlines as well as hospitals. It shows the hospital has documented processes and audits them. It is issued by private certification companies, of which there are many, and quality varies. ISO 9001 is a reasonable extra, but it is not a substitute for NABH or JCI, and it tells you very little about clinical safety. To check it, look for the certification body’s name on the certificate and verify the certificate number on that company’s own website.

The licences that matter but rarely appear as logos

Accreditation is voluntary. Licences are not. Several of these legal permissions are more important for specific treatments than any badge:

• State clinical establishment registration. Every hospital needs to be registered with the relevant state health authority to operate legally. It is a baseline, not a quality marker.
• THOTA transplant registration. Under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994, any hospital doing organ or tissue transplants must be registered with the state’s Appropriate Authority for each type of transplant it performs. Registration is renewed every five years. If you are coming for a kidney or liver transplant, ask for this certificate. It also matters for foreign patients with a living donor, because the donor-recipient pair must be approved by the hospital’s or state’s authorisation committee before surgery.
• AERB licences for radiation. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board licenses radiotherapy machines (linear accelerators, telecobalt units) and CT and interventional X-ray equipment, and authorises nuclear medicine and brachytherapy facilities. If you are travelling for cancer radiotherapy, the hospital should hold AERB licences for its machines.
• Blood bank and pharmacy licences issued under drug regulations, which most large hospitals hold as routine.

Here is the whole alphabet in one place.

Body / credential	What it covers	Who issues it	How to verify	Validity
NABH	Whole-hospital quality and patient safety systems	National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (Quality Council of India)	NABH “Find a Healthcare Organisation” directory; check certificate number and dates	Four years for current hospital certificates, with surveillance in between (older cycles were shorter)
JCI	Whole-organisation quality, using international standards	Joint Commission International	Joint Commission “Find Accredited International Organizations” search, filtered by country	Three years; reaccreditation survey every cycle
NABL	Medical laboratory testing (ISO 15189)	National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (Quality Council of India)	NABL laboratory search; check lab number and scope of tests	Stated on certificate (recently around four years)
ISO 9001	General quality management processes	Private certification bodies	The certifying company’s own certificate lookup	Usually three years with annual audits
THOTA registration	Legal permission to perform specific organ or tissue transplants	State Appropriate Authority	Request the registration certificate from the hospital; state transplant body	Five years, then renewal
AERB licence	Radiation equipment: radiotherapy, CT, nuclear medicine	Atomic Energy Regulatory Board	Request licence copies from the hospital	Stated on each licence

Verifying NABH Status Online — A Walkthrough

The fastest way to check hospital accreditation for an Indian hospital is the NABH register. NABH runs a public directory of the organisations it has accredited, certified or empanelled. People often search for an “NABH accredited hospitals list” and land on third-party blogs with outdated tables. Skip those. Go to the source.

1. Open the official directory. Go to the NABH Find a Healthcare Organisation page. You can also reach it from the “Patient” menu on the NABH home page. Make sure the address in your browser is nabh.co, not a look-alike.
2. Select the state. Use the “Select State” dropdown. Delhi, Haryana (for Gurugram), Uttar Pradesh (for Noida), Maharashtra (for Mumbai), Telangana (for Hyderabad), Tamil Nadu (for Chennai) and Karnataka (for Bengaluru) are the usual choices for international patients.
3. Select the city. Use the “Select City” dropdown. Remember that many “Delhi” hospitals are actually in Gurugram or Noida, which sit in other states.
4. Optionally filter by speciality. The “Filter by Speciality” list lets you narrow results, for example to cardiology or dialysis. Leave it blank on your first search so you do not accidentally filter out the hospital you want.
5. Search and find the exact campus. Large groups have many branches with similar names. Match the full name and the address, not just the brand.
6. Open the record and note the details. Write down the certificate or reference number, the programme (full accreditation or entry-level certification), and the validity dates.
7. Ask the hospital for its certificate and compare. An NABH hospital certificate shows a reference number in a format like H-2025-1601, the hospital name and address, the number of sanctioned beds, the scope of services covered, and “valid from” and “valid until” dates. Everything on the certificate should match the directory.
8. Check that the scope includes your treatment. The scope lists the clinical and diagnostic services assessed. If you need neurosurgery and neurosurgery is not on the scope, ask why.

NABH itself notes that its directory includes organisations under renewal and that some records may be incomplete following data migration to the new website. So if a well-known hospital does not appear, do not panic. Email the hospital, ask for its certificate, and if you still have doubts, contact NABH directly. A hospital that is genuinely accredited will send you its certificate within a day or two without fuss.

Red flags at this stage: the hospital refuses to share the certificate, sends a blurry screenshot instead of a PDF, the certificate’s dates have passed, or the name on the certificate is a sister hospital.

Checking JCI Accreditation

If you have seen a list of “JCI accredited hospitals in India” on a travel website, treat it as a starting point only. Hospitals gain and lose JCI status every year, and those lists go stale quickly. The live record sits on The Joint Commission’s website, where JCI’s database is now hosted.

1. Open the search tool. Go to the Find Accredited International Organizations page on jointcommission.org.
2. Filter by country. Choose India. You will see every Indian organisation currently listed, across all JCI programmes.
3. Filter by programme if needed. Programmes include Hospital, Academic Medical Center Hospital, Laboratory, Ambulatory Care and others. For surgery or inpatient care, you want Hospital or Academic Medical Center Hospital. A JCI-accredited lab inside a hospital is not the same as a JCI-accredited hospital.
4. Find the exact campus. As with NABH, match the full name and city. One group may have JCI at its flagship campus and only NABH at others.
5. Note the accreditation programme and date. The listing shows which programme the organisation is accredited under and when. Because the cycle is three years, an award date more than three years old should prompt a question about the latest survey.
6. Compare with the hospital’s certificate. Ask the hospital for its current JCI certificate or award letter. The name, programme and dates should match the online listing.

If you want to understand what JCI expects of hospitals between surveys, its page on sustaining accreditation explains the three-year reaccreditation cycle and the check-ins in between.

Checking NABL and the licences

For lab accreditation, the NABL website has a laboratory search with lists of accredited, suspended and withdrawn labs. Search the lab number from the certificate, and check that the scope covers the tests your doctors will order. NABL certificates also state that accreditation only remains valid while the lab keeps complying, which is why the suspended and withdrawn lists exist.

Licences such as THOTA registration and AERB consents are rarely published in a patient-friendly search tool, so the practical route is to ask the hospital for copies. AERB explains on its consenting process page which radiation facilities need a licence, an authorisation or a registration. That helps you know what to ask for if you are coming for radiotherapy or a PET-CT.

Accreditation Isn’t Everything

Once you have confirmed the badges are real, it is tempting to stop there. Please don’t. Accreditation answers one question well: does this hospital have sound systems, and does it follow them? It does not answer every question you care about.

What accreditation does tell you

• The hospital has written policies for infection control, medication safety, patient identification and safe surgery, and an assessor has checked that staff follow them.
• Doctors and nurses are credentialed, meaning the hospital checks their qualifications and grants privileges for specific procedures.
• There is a functioning quality department that tracks incidents and indicators.
• Patients have defined rights, including informed consent and a complaints process.
• The hospital accepts outside inspection and has to keep passing it to keep the badge.

What accreditation does not tell you

• Department-level quality. Accreditation is awarded to the hospital as a whole. A hospital can have a world-class cardiac unit and a much less experienced orthopaedic team under the same certificate. If you need a knee replacement, look at the orthopaedic department specifically, rather than relying on the hospital-wide certificate.
• Individual surgeon outcomes. No accreditation scores the surgeon who will operate on you. You still need to check their registration, training and case volume. Our guide on how to check surgeon qualifications before treatment abroad walks you through that.
• Published infection rates and complication rates. Accredited hospitals track surgical site infections, catheter infections and readmissions internally, but they are not required to publish them for patients. You can ask, and good hospitals often share summary figures.
• Transplant or cancer outcomes. Survival and graft success depend on the programme’s experience, not the badge. For transplants, look at programme volume and track record, for example in our overview of organ transplant hospitals in India.
• Price, transparency or the international patient experience. Accreditation does not regulate how clearly a hospital explains its estimate or how well it supports foreign patients.

Think of accreditation as a floor, not a ceiling. It rules out hospitals that lack basic safety systems. Choosing among accredited hospitals still means looking at the department, the doctor and the hospital’s experience with your condition. Our city guides to the best hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad are a useful next step for shortlisting by speciality.

Five Questions to Email the Hospital

After your online checks, send the hospital’s international patient desk a short email. Written answers are better than phone calls because you can keep them, share them with your doctor at home and compare hospitals side by side. Here are the five questions we suggest, with what a good answer looks like.

1. “Please send copies of your current NABH and JCI certificates for this campus.”

A good answer is a clear PDF of each certificate showing the campus address and valid dates, ideally within one or two working days. If the hospital is between surveys or renewing, it should say so openly and explain the timeline.

2. “Does the accreditation scope include the department and procedure I need?”

Ask them to point to the line on the scope that covers your treatment, whether that is cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, bone marrow transplant or radiotherapy. A vague “the whole hospital is accredited” is not quite an answer.

3. “Do you hold the specific licences for my treatment?”

For a transplant, request the THOTA registration for that organ. For radiotherapy, request the AERB licence for the machine you will be treated on. For lab-heavy treatments like oncology or transplant, ask for the NABL certificate and confirm that tissue typing or the relevant tests are within scope.

4. “What are your recent outcomes for this procedure?”

Ask how many of these procedures the team performs each year, and for summary figures on complications, infection rates and, where relevant, survival. Hospitals vary in what they will share, but a confident team usually has these numbers ready. If they refuse outright, weigh that in your decision.

5. “Who is the named surgeon, and what is their registration number?”

Every doctor practising in India must be registered with the National Medical Commission or a state medical council. The registration number lets you confirm the doctor is real and qualified. A hospital that will not name your surgeon before you travel is a hospital to be cautious about.

If you would like a longer list of things to ask, our guide to questions to ask an international patient coordinator covers costs, timelines, aftercare and travel logistics as well.

Common mistakes we see families make

• Trusting the group, not the campus. “Apollo is JCI accredited” may be true of some Apollo hospitals and not others. Always check the branch.
• Reading the logo, not the date. An expired certificate is not an accreditation. Hospitals sometimes leave old badges up for years.
• Mixing up NABL and NABH. The names look alike. One is for labs, the other for hospitals.
• Relying on an agent’s word. A good facilitator will happily send you certificates and links. One who gets defensive when you ask is telling you something. Our comparison of a medical tourism agency versus booking directly explains what to expect from each route.
• Stopping at the badge. Two accredited hospitals can differ hugely in experience with your specific condition.

How accreditation fits into your timeline

Do the accreditation checks early, ideally before you send medical reports for a treatment plan. That way you only spend time on hospitals that pass. A sensible order is: shortlist two or three accredited hospitals, verify their status online, ask the five questions, then arrange a video consultation with the specialist. Our guide to an online consultation with an Indian hospital explains how to prepare. Once you have chosen, the hospital’s invitation letter supports your medical visa application for India, so verifying the hospital first also protects your visa paperwork.

Quick Verdict: A logo proves nothing until you have checked it. Look the hospital up on the official NABH directory and the Joint Commission’s JCI search, match the exact campus, and read the validity dates. Treat NABL as lab accreditation only and ISO as a management extra. For transplants and radiotherapy, ask for THOTA and AERB licences. Then remember that accreditation is a safety floor: you still need to judge the department, the surgeon and the outcomes.

Accreditation FAQs for International Patients

Is NABH or JCI better for international patients?

Neither is simply “better.” Both assess hospital-wide quality and safety systems, and NABH’s hospital standards are accredited by ISQua, the same international body that reviews other national accreditors. JCI is useful when an insurer or a government referral programme back home specifically asks for international accreditation. Many top Indian hospitals hold both, and many excellent hospitals hold NABH only.

How long is NABH accreditation valid?

Current NABH hospital certificates are issued for four years, with a surveillance assessment during the cycle. Some older material still mentions three years, which applied to earlier cycles. The safest approach is to read the “valid from” and “valid until” dates printed on the hospital’s certificate.

How often is JCI accreditation renewed?

JCI requires reaccreditation every three years, through a full on-site survey. If the award date you see is more than three years old, ask the hospital about its most recent survey.

What if a hospital I like is not in the NABH directory?

NABH notes that its directory includes organisations under renewal and that some records may be incomplete after moving to its new website. Ask the hospital for its certificate, check the number and dates, and contact NABH if anything does not match. A genuinely accredited hospital will send the certificate quickly.

Does an NABL logo mean the hospital is accredited?

No. NABL accredits laboratories against ISO 15189. It means the hospital’s lab testing has been assessed, which is valuable, but it does not cover surgery, wards or intensive care. Look for NABH or JCI for hospital-level accreditation.

What extra approval is needed for an organ transplant in India?

The hospital must be registered under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act for that specific type of transplant, with renewal every five years. For foreign patients with a living donor, the donor and recipient must also be approved by an authorisation committee before surgery. Ask the hospital to explain the process and the documents your embassy will need.

Does accreditation guarantee a good result?

No. Accreditation confirms that safety and quality systems are in place and being followed. It does not measure an individual surgeon’s results or a specific department’s outcomes. Use it to rule hospitals in or out, then compare departments, doctors and experience with your condition.

Let Us Do the Checking With You

Taking ten minutes to check hospital accreditation is one of the simplest things you can do to protect yourself before travelling for treatment, and now you know exactly where to look. If you would rather not do it alone, our team works only with accredited Indian hospitals and will share the certificates, licence copies and doctor registration details for any hospital we suggest, so you can verify every one yourself.

Send us your medical reports and tell us what treatment you need. We will come back with a shortlist of suitable accredited hospitals, an estimate and a plan for your trip. Contact the HealthCheckBox team to get started.