About healthcare identifiers
Healthcare identifiers are purpose-built for healthcare settings, persist throughout an individual’s entire life and can consistently and uniquely identify and connect healthcare recipients to providers and provider organisations. By contrast, a person may have multiple Medicare numbers over their lifetime if their circumstances change, e.g. they transition from their parent’s card to their own, or they share a card with a partner and/or children.
Healthcare identifiers are unique 16-digit numbers assigned to:
- Individuals: An Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) identifies an individual healthcare recipient for healthcare purposes. Each individual enrolled in Medicare (or the Department of Veteran Affairs) gets an IHI automatically. IHIs are also available on request to other healthcare consumers (including permanent residents and visitors to Australia).
See how to apply for an IHI.
- Individual healthcare providers: A Healthcare Provider Identifier – Individual (HPI-I) identifies an individual healthcare provider who provides healthcare, such as a general practitioner, allied health professional, specialist, nurse, dentist and pharmacist. A provider gets an HPI-I automatically when they register with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra). Other health professionals meeting certain criteria can also apply for an HPI-I.
- Organisations that provide health services: A Healthcare Provider Identifier–Organisation (HPI–O) identifies a healthcare provider organisation where healthcare is provided, such as a hospital, medical practice, pathology laboratory and radiology laboratory. Organisations must register with the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) to obtain an HPI-O.
See how to apply for an HPI-I and HPI-O.
- Organisations that provide healthcare support services: From 1 November 2025, organisations that do not directly provide healthcare services but provide care and support services to older Australians or people with disability may register with the HI Service for a Healthcare Support Service Provider – Organisation (HSP-O) identifier. This includes organisations that provide in-home care support and personal care services. Providers with a HSP-O will not have access to the My Health Record system
See how to apply for an HSP-O.
The Healthcare Identifiers Service
The HI Service is a national system that assigns and uniquely identifies individuals, healthcare providers and organisations. The HI Service supports many aspects of digital health, including electronic prescribing, secure messaging and My Health Record. The Chief Executive Medicare oversees the HI Service.
Purpose of Healthcare Identifiers
Healthcare identifiers are administered under the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 (Cth) (HID Act). The objective of the HID Act is to provide the foundations for safe and reliable healthcare-related communication and exchange of health information between providers and patients, and to pave the way for an interoperable, digitally connected national health system.
Healthcare identifiers connect the right information with the right individual at the point of care. This gives both healthcare providers and patients confidence that they are using the correct information, wherever and whenever they provide or receive healthcare.
They also play a crucial role in enabling the secure and accurate exchange of health information between national digital health systems, such as My Health Record and electronic prescribing.
Changes to the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010
Public consultation on the HID Act supported expanding the types of providers and organisations that can be assigned a healthcare identifier and broadening the purposes for which healthcare identifiers can be utilised.
Following that review, reforms to the legislative framework are being progressed in phases:
Phase 1 – Changes to the HID Act made by the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2025 took effect from 1 November 2025.
Phase 2 – Further reforms are proposed under the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2025 introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament in October 2025. The proposed changes will also authorise the use of healthcare identifiers in emerging health technology solutions and national digital health infrastructure and support the development of standards to ensure the safe and accurate exchange of health information across care settings.
See frequently asked questions for more detail about the changes.
Data use, security and governance
Use and storage
Individuals via My Health Record and healthcare providers via various clinical systems, use healthcare identifiers to ensure information is accurate and up to date. Healthcare identifier information is stored in the HI Service, which is administered by Services Australia.
All healthcare identifier information is stored in strict compliance with security and privacy controls (see below).
Governance
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is the independent regulator of the privacy aspects of the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 (HID Act). It also monitors the HI Service and handles complaints.
Security and privacy
The HI Service protects individual privacy through legislation and technical security and access controls.
The HID Act specifies that healthcare identifiers can be used for healthcare and related management purposes, with penalties in place for misuse.
Find out more about:
Reviews
At the end of each financial year, the HI Service operator reports on its:
- activities
- finances
- operations
The Ministerial Council and the Minister for Health and Ageing review the annual reports, which are available from Services Australia.
Find out more
Read the frequently asked questions for more information
Amendments to the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010: Frequently Asked Questions
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