FRRO permission to change hospital on an Indian medical visa: the rule is published, the procedure is not

Last checked: 13 September 2026. Every fact on this page was read that day, directly from the Indian government page, Gazette document or IVAC page named next to it. Nothing here is copied from another guide. Open the links and check us.

Rules change. If you are reading this long after 13 September 2026, treat the date above as the warning it is meant to be.

This page is not legal advice and not medical advice. It quotes what the Indian government and the Indian visa centre in Bangladesh publish. It does not tell you what to do, and it cannot tell you what an officer will decide in your case.

1. Read this first: what we could NOT verify

This is at the top, not the bottom, because it is the part that can hurt you if you assume otherwise.

• We could not confirm that the hospital is actually printed on a Bangladeshi patient's visa. The Bureau of Immigration writes "(endorsed on initial visa)" in passing (section 2). But the Bureau's own full list of medical-visa conditions — M-1, M-2, M-3 and M-4 — does not mention a hospital at all (section 4). We have not seen a visa. We are not going to tell you what is written on yours.
• There is no published procedure for asking. No form. No document list. No fee. No processing time. No deadline. No named service. We looked in the places the Bureau of Immigration publishes its other services and it is not there (section 5).
• We could not see inside e-FRRO, the portal the Bureau sends people to. It needs a login. So we cannot tell you whether a hospital-change option exists behind that login. "We did not find it published" is not the same as "it does not exist."
• We do not know what counts as "documentary proof justifying such change". The Bureau uses that phrase and does not define it.
• We do not know whether a referral by your first hospital changes anything. Nothing we read addresses a referral, a second opinion, or a hospital that turns a patient away.
• We do not know what the consequence actually is in practice. IVAC says a change without permission "may lead to restrictions on travel to India in future". "May" is their word, not ours. We found no published rule setting out what that restriction is, who imposes it, or for how long.

If another website gives you a form number, a fee or a processing time for changing hospital, ask them which government page it came from, and open that page yourself.

2. The rule, in the words of the two offices that publish it

Two different offices publish this rule, and they do not say it the same way. Both are official. We are printing both and we are not going to tell you which one wins.

What the Indian visa centre in Bangladesh says

"Applicants seeking medical visa should visit the designated hospital only for which visa has been issued. Change of Hospital requires FRRO permission in India. Change of hospital without FRRO permission amounts to visa rules violation and may lead to restrictions on travel to India in future."

— IVAC Bangladesh, Important Advisory for medical visa (source), read 13 September 2026. The page's own byline reads "Admin April 24, 2024".

The same rule appears a second time, on IVAC's homepage, in slightly different words and with no date on it at all:

"Applicants seeking medical visa should visit the designated hospital only for which visa has been issued. Change in Hospital requires permission of FRRO. Change of hospital without the approval of FRRO tantamount to violation of visa regulations and may lead to imposition of restriction on travel to india in future."

— IVAC Bangladesh, homepage advisory (source), read 13 September 2026

Two wordings of one rule, on one website, one of them undated. The substance is the same; we point out the difference only so that you are not confused if you see both.

What India's Bureau of Immigration says

"Change of hospital/Place of treatment (endorsed on initial visa) shall be permitted only on case-to-case basis, subject to production of documentary proof justifying such change."

— Bureau of Immigration, Ministry of Home Affairs, Medical Treatment in India (source), read 13 September 2026

These two are not in conflict, and the difference between them matters. IVAC tells you permission is required. The Bureau tells you permission is not automatic — "only on case-to-case basis", and only if you produce proof that justifies the change.

Read together, the published position is this. You have to ask. Permission is not automatic. You may ask and still be refused.

3. Where the hospital's name enters your file in the first place

For a Bangladeshi applicant, the hospital is named before the visa is issued. The High Commission of India in Dhaka lists, among the documents for a medical visa:

"A letter of appointment from a Government/ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)/NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers/MCI (Medical Council of India)/CGHS (Central Government Health Scheme) recognized hospital in India."

— High Commission of India, Dhaka, VISA DOCUMENTS: CATEGORY-WISE, Medical Visa section (PDF source), read 13 September 2026. The server reports this file was last modified on 14 August 2026. (The unclosed bracket is in the original.)

So a named hospital is in your application from the beginning. That is a fact about the application. Whether that name is then printed on the visa sticker is the thing we could not confirm — see section 1, and section 4 below.

We cover the full document list, and the second official list that disagrees with it, on our requirements page.

4. The rule is not in the Act, not in the Rules, and not in the visa conditions

This is worth knowing before you argue with anyone about it.

It is not in the law. India replaced its immigration statutes in 2025. We read both of the current instruments in full, as the Bureau of Immigration itself publishes them:

• The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 (Act No. 13 of 2025, Gazette of India Extraordinary, Part II Section 1, dated 4 April 2025)
• The Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025 (G.S.R. 596(E), Ministry of Home Affairs notification of 1 September 2025)

Neither contains the words "change of hospital", "change in hospital" or "place of treatment". We searched both documents for those phrases and found nothing.

It is not in the medical-visa conditions either. The Bureau of Immigration publishes the full conditions for M-1 (patient), M-2 (medical attendant), M-3 and M-4. Those conditions run to registration thresholds, attendant numbers and e-visa durations — and they do not mention a hospital anywhere. To see them yourself, open https://boi.gov.in/boi/terms-and-conditions-of-your-visa and choose "Medical Visa (M)" in the dropdown — the text does not appear until you do.

So the requirement to get permission before changing hospital rests, as far as we can find, on two web pages: the Bureau of Immigration's Medical Treatment in India page and IVAC's advisory. Those two offices are the Indian immigration authority and the Indian visa centre in Bangladesh, so the rule carries weight. But it is not a section of the Act. If someone tells you it is, ask them for the section number.

5. What a published procedure looks like, and what this one looks like

The Bureau of Immigration publishes a list of the services a foreigner can obtain from the FRRO. Under Registration Authority, the menu reads: Visa Extension/Conversion, Exit Permit, Police Clearance Certificate, Child born in India, Death Intimation, and then under Miscellaneous Services: Change of Passport, Change of Address, Change of Academic Course, Medical Exigency, Acquisition of Foreign Nationality by an Indian, Stateless Person, Obligation of Hotels, Hospitals & Educational Institutes, Penalties. (source, read 13 September 2026)

There is no "Change of Hospital" in that list.

Now compare what the same office publishes for a student who needs to change course:

"In case a foreign national on student visa needs a change in the course being undertaken by him/ her, he/ she should obtain a 'Change of Course' service from the jurisdictional FRRO/ FRO on https://indianfrro.gov.in/efrro/home within 14 days of changing the course."

— Bureau of Immigration, Change of Academic Course (source), read 13 September 2026

That single sentence gives a student four things: the name of the service, the office that grants it, the web address to use, and a deadline.

A patient changing hospital is told that permission is required, that it is granted case by case, and that going without it may restrict future travel to India. The patient is not told the name of the service, the documents, the fee, the processing time, or how long they have.

We are not saying no such service exists. We are saying we could not find it published. The e-FRRO portal at https://indianfrro.gov.in/ requires a login and we could not read what is inside it, so we cannot rule out that the option is there once you sign in. If you have an account, that is the first place to look.

Our after-you-arrive tool shows this comparison to anybody on a medical visa who answers that a different hospital is involved, beside the questions the missing procedure leaves them holding, and prints both as a sheet. It does not show it to somebody on another kind of visa, because the sentences above name the medical visa and we are not going to stretch them.

6. One official sentence that appears to point the other way

The Bureau of Immigration's Medical Exigency page says this:

"Any foreigner (including Pakistani national) suffering from any minor medical condition which needs only OPD consultation can take treatment at any hospital on his/ her primary Visa."

— Bureau of Immigration, Medical Exigency (source), read 13 September 2026

"OPD" is out-patient department. The page does not define it.

We are publishing this because it is relevant and because we cannot resolve it. That sentence is about a foreigner on a primary visa — someone who came for another reason and fell ill. It does not say "medical visa". Whether "any foreigner… on his/ her primary Visa" reaches a patient who is already in India on an M-1 medical visa, and whether an out-patient second opinion at a different hospital is therefore outside the "designated hospital only" rule, is not something either page answers, and we are not going to answer it for you.

Both sentences are published by the same Bureau. We have quoted both. If this question decides something for you, ask the FRRO, not a website.

7. What the hospital that admits you has to do, whoever it is

This is separate from your permission, and it is in the law rather than on a web page.

The Act:

"Every hospital, nursing home or any other such medical institution providing medical, lodging or sleeping facility in their premises shall furnish information in respect of any foreigner taking indoor medical treatment or their attendant for whom such lodging or sleeping facility has been provided to the Registration Officer in such manner as may be prescribed."

— The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, section 10 (PDF source), read 13 September 2026

The Rules say how and how fast:

"The person in charge of hospital, nursing home or any other medical institution shall, as soon as may be but not beyond twenty-four hours, after the arrival of a foreigner, transmit a copy of duly filled in Form III, specifying the particulars furnished by the foreigner, electronically to the Registration Officer…"

— The Immigration and Foreigners Rules, 2025, rule 18(5) (PDF source), read 13 September 2026

Form III in the same Rules is headed "REPORT ON FOREIGNERS ACCOMMODATED OR ADMITTED TO BE FURNISHED BY KEEPER OF ACCOMMODATION AND BY HOSPITAL, NURSINING HOME AND OTHER MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS" and is marked "[See rules 16, 17 (5) and 18(5)]" and "[Earlier FORM 'C']". (The spelling "NURSINING" is in the gazetted document.)

The published trail stops here, so this page stops here too. The law says the admitting hospital reports the admission. It does not say what happens next. We are not going to guess.

We set out the rest of the arrival and reporting rules, including a drafting error in rule 18(6), on our arrival and FRRO page.

8. Check it yourself — every address on this page

A note on the Bureau of Immigration's pages. Its content pages send no last-modified information, so apart from the sidebar of recent updates there is no way for a reader — or for us — to tell when any of them was last edited. The PDF files it hosts do carry a date; the web pages do not. Judge them accordingly.

9. The rest of this series

• Indian medical visa from Bangladesh: the process
• Indian medical visa requirements from Bangladesh: the two official document lists that do not match
• How many people can travel with a patient?
• After you arrive: FRRO registration and who reports you
• When treatment outlasts your visa: extension
• Medical visa fraud from Bangladesh: what the Indian High Commission itself says
• Questions to ask before you pay a medical travel agent

About this page

Infirmy is building a place where patients can post a case and Indian hospitals answer it. We have no hospitals listed yet, and this page recommends none. We have not named a hospital here because we have nothing verified to name, and we would rather say that than fill the space.

We wrote this page because the rule it describes is published in two places and explained in neither. A patient whose own doctor sends them to a different hospital should know that this question exists before they go.

Every quotation above was copied from the page or document named beside it on 13 September 2026. If one of those sources changes, this page will be wrong until we check it again.

This is general information about process and paperwork, not medical advice. Infirmy does not diagnose, recommend a treatment, or tell anyone what care to seek.