New NCAHP Rules: Allied healthcare professionals must now register, retrain every year for renewal

Much like doctors and nurses, allied and healthcare professionals spanning 57 different vocations, including physiotherapists, dieticians, lab technologists and psychologists, will soon have to enrol in the state and central registers in order to practice in their field.

They will have to attend a minimum of 15 hours of ‘continuous professional development education’ annually to be eligible for renewing their registration every five years. They will also be required to inform their respective state allied and healthcare councils if they wish to work in a state other than where they reside.

The provisions have been included in the new Registration of Allied and Healthcare Professionals Regulations, 2026, which have been recently notified by the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) , the apex regulator for training and practice in allied health science disciplines.

These regulations, released almost a year after they were proposed by the commission, for the first time, pave the way for the creation of official rolls of allied and healthcare professionals (AHPs) at both the state as well as the national level. The statutes are part of the central government’s plan to bring uniformity and standardisation in allied care education and professions around the country.

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The regulations come in the backdrop of the centre’s efforts to operationalise a national medical register (NMR) for practitioners of modern medicine. Created in 2024, NMR is yet to take off amid multiple hurdles and thousands of applications pending for verification. Recently, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has proposed to amend its registration regulations to make NMR enrolment mandatory and has directed medical colleges to update the registration of their teaching staff.

As has been the norm in other healthcare occupations, AHPs, including the Indian nationals who studied outside the country , will have to register themselves with one of the state councils, which will then forward the details to the commission for maintaining a central register. Those working in the states without a functioning council can directly sign up for the central register.

The graduates seeking to undergo an internship, too, need to obtain a temporary registration of their respective state council, while foreign nationals can also get a temporary registration to obtain higher education, undergo clinical training and other activities.

The regulations also allow for AHPs who are offering their services without possessing the requisite qualifications to register provisionally. This provision was necessitated, as until now the allied healthcare training was largely unregulated at both the state and central levels , with significant variation in education standards, course structure and nomenclature around the country. NCAHP has, till date, has prepared common course structures, curricula and admission criteria for 17 professions.

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NCAHP: Separate rules for the unqualified

The NCAHP chairperson Yagna Shukla told Careers360 that the body is in the process of drafting a separate set of regulations for registering for those professionals who fail to satisfy the new standard educational qualifications. “These professionals must meet some basic conditions in order to be eligible for provisional registration, though we have kept these provisions very broad. They can obtain full-fledged registration after going through bridge courses for their respective disciplines,” she said.

The registration process won’t commence immediately as another set of regulations – those pertaining to the formation and functioning of four autonomous boards under state councils – are yet to be notified. It’s the state ethics and registration board, one of the four autonomous boards, that’s tasked with registering AHPs. With the draft regulations for these bodies already released for public consultation, the commission hopes that the government will soon notify the final version of the document.

Shukla said that the commission has also built the central registration portal, which will be linked to the state portals. “It’s currently undergoing a trial run,” she said.

The regulations cover 57 professions across 10 broad disciplines. While it includes ‘psychologist’ among the trades under its jurisdiction, NCAHP has clarified that ‘clinical psychologist’ that are eligible to register under the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) are exempt from it. The inclusion of ‘applied psychology and behavioral sciences’ among the professions under NCAHP’s ambit has caused confusion among psychology students and teachers , as the discipline is facing governance claims from multiple regulating bodies thanks to its interdisciplinary nature.

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New NCAHP Rules: Registration validity, renewal

According to the NCAHP regulations, registrations will be valid for a period of five years, and need to be renewed after it expires. The professionals must clock in 15 hours per year – 75 hours for years – to upgrade themselves professionally by attending seminars, conferences, workshops, training programmes and faculty development programmes. Only a maximum of 50% of these participations can be in online mode . This provision is similar to the continuous nursing education (CNE) requirement for nurses to continue in the profession.

Shukla said that the purpose of this requirement is to orient AHPs towards upskilling, though she acknowledges that the professionals may just treat it as a formality to be fulfilled through mere paperwork rather than actually undergoing any training. “That’s why we have put a 50% limit on participating in online mode,” she said.

NCAHP: Single-state registration, all-India practice

The regulations stipulate that while the AHPs can apply for registration in only one state register based on their residence, they can practise in other parts of the country. However, they need to intimate their state council.

The state councils are required to accept or reject applications for registration within a month, and provide a written explanation in case of rejection. The professionals can appeal against the rejection to the commission.

While the public draft of the regulations, released in September last year, had listed a number of grounds on which the state councils could remove professionals from their rolls – such as misrepresentation of facts, conviction in a crime and violation of professional standards – the final notification omits them. Shukla explained that these details will be included in the separate regulations for the ethical code for AHPs , which are also currently in the public consultation phase.