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).
- 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 HI Service to obtain an HPI-O.
See how to apply for an IHI.
See how to apply for an HPI-I and HPI-O.
The Healthcare Identifiers Service
The Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) is a national system that assigns and uniquely identifies individuals, health 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.
Changes to the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010
Healthcare identifiers 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. However broad adoption of the identifiers has been slow.
A review, public consultation of the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 (Cth) (HID Act) identified that in order to maximise the benefits of Healthcare Identifiers (HIs) and encourage greater adoption and use, it is essential to:
- expand the types of providers who can be assigned an HI, and
- broaden the purposes for which HIs can be utilised.
Following that review, reforms to the legislative framework were proposed to progress in phases
Phase 1 – Changes to the HID Act were passed by the Commonwealth Parliament through the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2025. These amendments will take effect from 1 November 2025.
The Phase 1 amendments, complementing aged care reforms, aim to enhance the use of HIs by:
- Establishing a new type of healthcare identifier for healthcare support service providers, including those assisting older Australians and people with disability. Eligible providers will be assigned an organisation identifier known as the Healthcare Support Provider Organisation Identifier (HSP-O).
- Creating authorisations for ‘Health Administration Entities’ (HAEs), enabling relevant entities to use HIs for health-related administrative activities such as supporting the delivery and monitoring of health programs.
- Expanding the eligibility for a Healthcare Provider Identifier – Individual (HPI-I) to a broader range of allied health professionals, and simplifying the assignment process for those not registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra).
Phase 2 – Further reforms are proposed under the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2025 (Omnibus Bill). These enabling amendments aim to strengthen the role of healthcare identifiers in supporting emerging models of care, including multidisciplinary and remote services that rely on accurate communication and clinical handover.
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.
Why the changes are important
These changes aim to:
- Promote wider HI use: For HIs to be able to deliver maximum benefit, they must be used widely and consistently across multiple care settings. Currently , HIs can only be assigned to healthcare providers (e.g. , GPs, nurses, specialists, some allied health providers, and pharmacists) and healthcare organisations (such as hospitals and general practices). This creates gaps for consumers receiving other crucial support from disability and aged care provider organisations, which are not currently eligible for an HI or authorised to handle HIs. It also limits the ability of GPs and specialists to gain visibility of the full range of care and support that consumers receive.
- Better joined-up experience for patients: Change is needed to recognise the importance of ancillary care and support services that contribute to better health outcomes. Expanding HI use will help deliver a more integrated experience, particularly for consumers receiving care and support across multiple settings.
- Broaden and clarify the purposes for which HIs can be used: HIs are limited in the purposes for which they can be used. For example, they cannot be used for health administration purposes, which creates inefficiencies for providers because they cannot integrate their clinical and administration systems and need to maintain separate identifiers for each. Additionally, the HID Act lacks clarity regarding the use of HIs for research and health data analysis to support policy and planning, despite this being one of the original intentions when the Act was introduced.
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 Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 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
Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 legislative framework reforms: Frequently Asked Questions
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