– NHI’s Mandatory Identification Check, Effective from May 20 –

The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) announced that starting from May 20, 2024, individuals with National Health Insurance (NHI) will need to present their ID for insurance coverage. Under the new requirement, everyone visiting a hospital or clinic must present an ID in order to receive the types of healthcare services covered by the NHI.

Previously, most healthcare institutions have been providing healthcare services to patients without requiring them to present their ID as long as they provide their resident registration number. This practice has been continuously abused by patients who borrow others’ names to receive NHI coverage even when they are not covered by the insurance. To prevent these abuses and for a fairer NHI scheme, the National Health Insurance Act was amended (by Act No. 19420) to require mandatory identification for NHI coverage at healthcare institutions, which took effect on May 20 for healthcare institutions across the country.

* (Detection and Recovery) Over the past five years, the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) has detected an average of 35,000 cases of abuse per year and issued recovery orders for benefits totaling KRW 800 million. The actual number of cases is likely to be much higher, because the NHIS only counted obvious cases.

Acceptable means of identification include IDs such as resident registration cards, alien registration cards, electronic signatures, and identification services provided by identification service providers. The mobile NHI certificate app or QR code is also accepted for convenient identification.

The requirement does not apply to certain cases where identification is not feasible for legitimate reasons, such as patients who are minors. In such cases, only the patient’s resident registration number is required to receive benefits.

In case of a fraudulent use of NHI coverage, both the person who lent his/her name and the person who used the borrowed name are now punishable with imprisonment for not more than two years or a fine of not more than KRW 20 million, and the amount fraudulently claimed will be recovered. A healthcare institution can also be fined up to one million won for failing to check patients’ ID.

For more information about the NHI mandatory ID check, please visit the official NHIS website (https://www.mohw.go.kr/eng/index.jsp) or call the Call Center at +82-1755-1000.