NABH accreditation: what it costs, how long it takes, and two deadlines this autumn

Two dates are worth writing down before anything else on this page.

On 30 September 2026, the rebate on NABH entry-level certification ends. On 1 October 2026, hospitals above 300 beds stop being eligible for entry-level certification at all, for fresh applications and renewals alike. Government hospitals and facilities commissioned after that date are the stated exceptions.

The fees, as NABH publishes them

Full hospital accreditation fees have been unchanged since 1 April 2024. They are calculated on sanctioned beds, carry 18 per cent GST extra, and are non-refundable.

• Up to 100 beds: ₹40,000 application, ₹2,00,000 annual
• 101 to 300 beds: ₹75,000 application, ₹3,00,000 annual
• 301 to 500 beds: ₹1,00,000 application, ₹4,00,000 annual
• 501 beds and above: ₹1,50,000 application, ₹5,00,000 annual

Small healthcare organisations of 50 beds or fewer have their own accreditation programme at ₹25,000 application and ₹1,50,000 annual. Entry-level certification, which is a different thing again, is billed for a two-year cycle payable upfront.

We reproduce the full schedule on our NABH page. Note the taxonomy trap, because it costs people money: SHCO accreditation and entry-level certification are separate programmes with different fees and different validity periods. They are routinely conflated.

Four years, not three

NABH's current assessment policy states that a hospital accreditation certificate is valid for four years, with surveillance at 24 months. Three years is the figure most consultancy sites still carry, and it is wrong for the hospital programme. Other accreditation programmes run three years with surveillance at 18 months; certification programmes run two years with no surveillance at all.

Renewal must be requested at least six months before expiry. If nothing has been filed three months out, NABH treats the hospital as no longer interested.

The sequence, and what NABH actually commits to

Applications follow a fixed path: application and self-assessment, then pre-assessment (optional, and skippable), then final assessment, then corrective action, then the accreditation decision. NABH publishes timelines for the individual steps. Deficiencies in the application get 30 days to correct. The principal assessor uploads a report within seven days of an assessment. Corrective action after pre-assessment must be submitted within three months, and two cycles are allowed before it is closed out.

What NABH does not publish is an end-to-end duration. Every "six to twelve months" figure you will read is a consultancy's estimate, ours included. Treat it as one.

The gate at the end

Final assessment requires 80 per cent overall compliance, and every Core objective element must score at least 4 on the five-point scale. The Core rule is the one that fails hospitals: a strong overall percentage does not survive a single Core element scoring 3.

What this means for your hospital

If you are above 300 beds and still on entry level, the decision has been made for you. Move to the hospital accreditation programme before 1 October or lose the certification.

If you are below 300 beds and were going to do this anyway, doing it before 30 September is worth between ₹32,000 and ₹80,000.

And if you are budgeting, budget for the work rather than the fee. The published evidence on what actually fails is thin, but the one peer-reviewed study we could find is instructive: across two fully accredited hospitals it recorded 94 non-compliances, of which 27.6 per cent were documentation, 25.5 per cent process and 23.4 per cent policy. That is a sample of six hospitals in one city and should not be read as a national statistic. It does match what we see. Almost nothing fails on equipment.