an organization · IndiaNational Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers

India's hospital accreditation board, set up in 2005 as a constituent board of the Quality Council of India. It accredits hospitals, small healthcare organisations, eye care centres, blood banks, clinics, AYUSH hospitals, ethics committees and laboratories, and its accreditation is reassessed every two years rather than every three.

NABH matters to cross-border care for a reason that has nothing to do with quality: it is the gate. Indian government schemes and insurer empanelment — CGHS, ECHS — run through NABH status, so accreditation in India is tied to being paid domestically in a way that a voluntary international mark is not.

That changes the incentive. A hospital chasing JCI is chasing a foreign patient's confidence. A hospital chasing NABH is chasing both that and a domestic reimbursement channel, and the second is the larger sum for almost every hospital in the country.

Inference — a foreign reader comparing an Indian hospital's NABH mark with a Thai hospital's JCI mark is comparing two different instruments. One is a national scheme with money attached; the other is an international product. Counting them as equivalent badges flattens the difference.

The hospital applies to NABH, pays, is assessed, and is reassessed every two years. The standards are published, currently in their fifth edition, and the accredited organisations are searchable on NABH's own site. The standards themselves hold an ISQua EEA award.

As of 16 September 2026 NABH's homepage claims more than 30,000 accreditations and certifications across all its programmes — a count of certificates across every scheme it runs, not of accredited hospitals. The hospital figure most often cited is 1,299.