Patient guides · the official layer
India’s medical-travel system, explained
India’s medical-travel ecosystem has grown an official layer — a national portal, facilitator registration, hospital accreditation, dedicated visa categories — and almost nobody explains how the pieces fit together. This page does: what each part is, what it is for, and how a patient actually uses it. No facilitator has much incentive to write this; informed patients are harder to sell to. Consider it a feature.
The national portal — “Heal in India”
What it is: A government-backed one-stop portal (indiahealthcaretourism.com, run under the Services Export Promotion Council) listing registered hospitals and registered medical-value-travel facilitators, with patient-journey support from reports to follow-up.
How you use it: Check whether a hospital — or a facilitator — is registered. A listing is a registration signal; it is not a quality ranking, and portals evolve (the site has carried revamp notices).
NABH accreditation & MVTF empanelment
What it is: NABH accredits hospitals; separately, its Medical Value Travel Facilitator programme empanels facilitators who meet its checklist — the programme’s own documents state the charges as ₹5,000 application, ₹20,000 annual and ₹2,000 assessment, plus GST.
How you use it: Two different questions: “is this hospital accredited?” (the NABH directory) and “is this facilitator empaneled?” (the MVTF registry). Both are verifiable from abroad.
The e-Medical visa
What it is: The online medical visa for eligible nationalities: apply on the official portal only, with the hospital-issued invitation letter as the keystone document; attendant visas cover companions.
How you use it: Beware lookalike visa-fee websites — the government portal is indianvisaonline.gov.in. Our visa guide walks the document list.
The AYUSH visa (AY-1)
What it is: A dedicated category for treatment under India’s traditional-medicine systems — Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy and others — requiring an invitation letter from a recognized, accredited AYUSH facility registered on the MVT portal.
How you use it: Relevant only for traditional-medicine stays; short wellness activities can sit within tourist-visa rules, while structured treatment should follow this category.
State programmes
What it is: States run their own pushes: Maharashtra’s medical-value-travel policy (₹365 crore, reported 2026) names Nagpur a hub; Madhya Pradesh backs the Ujjain Medicity and wellness initiatives; Kerala runs its own long-standing vision.
How you use it: Mostly context — but a live state programme is one reason a tier-2 city may appear on a shortlist at all.
The lookalike trap, once more
Official pages warn about it themselves: visa-application lookalike sites charging fake fees, “portal registration” offered by middlemen for money, accreditation badges with no registry entry. The defensive habits are the same three: transact only on indianvisaonline.gov.in for visas; verify every badge on the issuer’s own registry; and treat anyone selling “registration”, “approval” or fixed-outcome paperwork as the threat the official warnings describe.
The system: FAQs
Is the “Heal in India” portal somewhere I should book through?
What is an “MVT facilitator”, and why does empanelment matter?
Which visa applies to my case?
Does Medtu Care hold these credentials?
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