Health-worker registration moves to SATUSEHAT SDMK: what to check

The Indonesian Health Council (KKI) registration portal now opens with a single sentence: “Starting 15 October 2026, registration of medical and health workers can only be done through SATUSEHAT SDMK.” The same sentence appears on the Ministry of Health’s SATUSEHAT SDMK page (KKI).

It sounds like a personal matter for each doctor, nurse, and pharmacist. For a hospital, though, more than a website address is moving: the source of health-worker data that other systems rely on is moving with it.

What changed

• One door for registration. Medical and health workers register only through SATUSEHAT SDMK.
• Definitive registration certificates (STR) are valid for life. Holders of an older STR apply for the lifetime STR on SATUSEHAT SDMK, so there are no more five-yearly renewals.
• The SDMK profile is reused. According to the SATUSEHAT SDMK page, professional licence applications in the digital public service mall (MPP Digital) pull data automatically from the SATUSEHAT SDMK profile. KKI’s FAQ also says the continuing-education (SKP) platform account is linked from SATUSEHAT SDMK (KKI FAQ).

In other words, a doctor’s personal data is now reused in many places, and an error in it is carried into all of them.

Why this is the hospital’s business

First, licensing. A doctor practising at your hospital needs a practice licence (SIP) for that site. If the licence application pulls from the SDMK profile, an outdated profile ends up in the licence file. KKI advises filling in personal data exactly as on the national ID card, because the STR application is integrated with the civil registry (Dukcapil).

The hospital also has a direct role. According to the KKI FAQ, employment data and SIP periods in SATUSEHAT SDMK must be validated by the SISDMK account of the facility where the health worker is employed, and that validation is a condition for linking the SKP Platform account. Sufficient continuing-education credits (SKP) are needed to renew the SIP every five years (on the latest SKP requirement). Slow validation at the hospital can hold up its own doctors’ SIP renewals.

Second, every record sent to SATUSEHAT names its doctor. A hospital system does not invent a doctor’s identity. According to the official SATUSEHAT documentation, a practitioner is looked up in the health-worker registry by national ID number (NIK), or by name, date of birth, and sex. Name searches are validated, so the name entered must match the data held in SATUSEHAT. The result is the doctor’s IHS number, which is then referenced in the visit data. A mistyped NIK in the hospital’s doctor master data means the doctor is not found. Even a NIK that is correct for the resident can come back empty if that person is not yet registered as a health worker.

The lookup is not always clean either. In the SATUSEHAT test environment, we have seen a single sample doctor’s NIK return dozens of practitioner records, and the first result was not the official one. A system that simply takes the top result will send visit data in the wrong person’s name.

Third, NIK is becoming the single key. E-signature certificates are issued per person after identity verification, and JKN electronic claims link the whole data chain through the NIK. A doctor’s NIK that is wrong in one system causes problems in another.

A checklist for HR and the HMS team

1. Ask every health worker to check their SATUSEHAT SDMK profile, especially personal data, which must match the ID card. This is each person’s own task, but the hospital can schedule it by unit and track who has finished.
2. List STR and SIP status per person. Record whether the STR is already lifetime, plus the SIP for practising at your hospital and its expiry date.
3. Reconcile the doctor master data in your HMS. For every doctor who treats patients, check the NIK, the exact name, and the IHS number. A doctor without a correct IHS number means incomplete visit data when it is sent.
4. Decide who owns this data. When a doctor joins or leaves, who updates the system: HR, medical records, or IT? Without a clear owner, doctor master data slowly drifts out of date.
5. Make sure the hospital’s SISDMK account is active and staffed. Health workers’ employment data and SIP periods wait for validation from that account before their SKP can be linked.

What we do not know yet

The “Program Information”, “Announcements”, and “Guides” menus on SATUSEHAT SDMK are still marked Coming Soon. KKI’s announcement does not list which services remain on its old portal, such as checking an application’s status or downloading the e-STR. Nor have we seen a document explaining whether, or how quickly, a change to a SATUSEHAT SDMK profile reaches the practitioner records that hospital systems look up. Until that is clear, treat the two as separate things to check.

Where we stand

Adievia does not handle health-worker registration or licensing. That sits between health workers, the Council, the Ministry of Health, and local government. Our part is on the system side. Adievia HMS looks up a doctor’s IHS number by NIK and accepts only results carrying an official health-worker number. If there is no official result, the system does not guess, and staff enter the number themselves from the SATUSEHAT portal. In Adievia Praktik, a doctor’s STR and SIP are verified before the practice starts seeing patients.

Read more: SATUSEHAT obligations for hospitals.