The nurse aide registry is the public record every state keeps of its nurse aides: the aides who passed the state's competency evaluation, plus any state findings entered on their records.
Federal rules require each state to establish and maintain a registry, keep it promptly accessible to the public and health care providers, and never charge an aide a fee to be listed.
Nursing homes must verify your listing before you serve as a nurse aide, with narrow exceptions for aides still in or just out of a state-approved program.
What is the nurse aide registry?
A nurse aide registry is the record every state keeps of its nurse aides: the aides who passed the competency evaluation, and any state findings entered on their records.
Federal rules require every state to establish and maintain a registry, and to keep it sufficiently accessible to meet the needs of the public and health care providers promptly (42 CFR 483.156(a)).
When a job ad or a search box says "CNA license," the credential behind that phrase is a certification: the registry entry created when the state records that you passed the nurse aide competency evaluation.
States run their registries through their own agencies, and a state may contract the daily operation and maintenance of the registry to a non-state entity while keeping accountability for its overall operation and compliance (42 CFR 483.156(b)(1)).
In Missouri, for example, Headmaster partners with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to provide certified nurse aide testing and registry services.
Prometric, another testing vendor, provides registry services for checking nurse aide status in the states it serves.
Being listed costs the aide nothing.
The federal rule says a state may not impose any charges related to registration on individuals listed in the registry (42 CFR 483.156(b)(4)).
The registry is also the employer-facing half of the credential, the part a nursing home verifies before you start (with two training-program exceptions described in the next section).
If you are still weighing the career itself, the certified nursing assistant career guide covers the role behind the listing.
Who gets listed and when?
You get listed by passing.
Federal rules require the state to include a record of successful completion of the competency evaluation in the nurse aide registry within 30 days of the date the individual is found competent (42 CFR 483.154(e)(2)).
The competency evaluation has two parts.
To pass at the federal standard, a candidate must pass both the written or oral exam and the skills demonstration, and each state sets its own passing standard (42 CFR 483.154(e)(1)).
The check happens before you ever clock in, and in nursing homes it is a federal requirement: before allowing an individual to serve as a nurse aide, a nursing home must receive registry verification that the person has met competency evaluation requirements (42 CFR 483.35(d)(4)).
The same rule carves out two cases where that verification is not required: an aide who is a full-time employee in a state-approved training and competency evaluation program, and an aide who recently completed one and is not yet listed.
Registries are not exclusively for nurse aides.
A state may also include home health aides who successfully completed a state-approved home health aide competency evaluation program, as long as the registry differentiates home health aides from nurse aides (42 CFR 483.156(a)(3)).
What information does it show?
The federal rule sets a minimum, and the minimum is three fields: the individual's full name, the information necessary to identify each individual, and the date the individual became eligible for placement in the registry (42 CFR 483.156(c)(1)).
The same section requires the registry to hold any state finding of abuse, neglect, or misappropriation of property, and a finding must be included in the registry within 10 working days of the finding (42 CFR 483.156(c)(1)(iv)(D)).
If you have filed a statement disputing a finding, the registry must include that statement in any response to an inquiry that reports the finding (42 CFR 483.156(a)(4)).
Those fields are a floor, not a ceiling: whatever else your state's lookup displays beyond them is that state's addition.
What do active, expired and finding statuses mean?
An active listing is the working state: the registry shows you as qualified to serve as a nurse aide, and your record has paid nursing or nursing-related services recent enough that the inactivity rules have not touched it.
That clock is the federal 24-month rule.
If a nurse aide goes 24 consecutive months without providing nursing or nursing-related services for pay, the aide must complete a new training and competency evaluation program, or a new competency evaluation program (42 CFR 483.35(d)(6)).
The registry enforces the same timeline on its own entries.
Registries must remove entries for individuals who have performed no nursing or nursing-related services for 24 consecutive months, unless the entry includes documented findings of abuse, neglect, or misappropriation of property (42 CFR 483.156(c)(2)).
States can add their own terms on top of that federal floor.
In Texas, a nurse aide registry certificate is valid for two years from issue.
An aide there who has not both performed nursing or nursing-related duties in a health care setting and completed 24 hours of in-service education in the 24 months since registration or renewal is in expired status and must retake both exams.
Findings follow different rules from lapsed work.
A finding must be entered within 10 working days.
It stays in the registry permanently unless the finding was made in error, the individual was found not guilty in a court of law, or the state is notified of the individual's death (42 CFR 483.156(c)(1)(iv)(D)).
A finding is not a paperwork note.
Only the state survey and certification agency may place findings of abuse, neglect, or misappropriation of property on the registry (42 CFR 483.156(b)(2)).
Nursing homes may not employ anyone with such a finding on a state nurse aide registry, or anyone a court has found guilty of abuse, neglect, exploitation, misappropriation or mistreatment (42 CFR 483.12(a)(3)).
Statuses and renewal terms are state-set
Can you be listed in more than one state?
Every state establishes and maintains its own nurse aide registry under the same federal requirement (42 CFR 483.156(a)).
An aide who has worked in more than one state can therefore appear in more than one state's records.
The federal rules assume exactly that.
Before allowing an individual to serve as a nurse aide, a nursing home must seek information from every state nurse aide registry that the facility believes will include information on the individual (42 CFR 483.35(d)(5)).
Your listing does not transfer automatically, though.
Texas tells CNAs moving to another state that they must contact the new state's registry, because whether nurse aide status transfers varies from state to state.
Whether your status can be transferred is the new state's decision, so its registry is the place to ask.
Nurse aides sit outside the systems nurses use, too.
Nursys covers only RN and LPN/VN licenses from participating boards of nursing, so it is not a lookup for a nurse aide listing.
How do you update your registry record?
Paid work is what keeps an entry alive: nursing or nursing-related services for pay are what stop the federal inactivity clock from completing.
24 consecutive months without paid services mean a new training and competency evaluation program, or a new competency evaluation program, before you can serve again (42 CFR 483.35(d)(6)).
Check your record the way an employer would.
In Missouri, candidates can check their nurse aide registry listing on Headmaster's TestMaster Universe portal, the same system that handles applications, scheduling and CNA renewals in that state.
Prometric provides registry services for checking nurse aide status in its states, and every registry must be promptly accessible to the public — so your state has a way to check a listing, through the agency or the contractor that maintains it.
Your identifying details are registry data.
Because the entry holds your full name and the information necessary to identify you, direct any corrections to those details to the office or contractor that maintains your state's registry.
Renewal is the state's own process.
Texas validates its registry certificates for two years from issue; whatever your state requires, confirm the current process with the registry itself before your renewal date.
Career information, not licensing, legal, medical, benefits or tax advice: registry requirements are state requirements, so confirm your status and renewal process with your state's nurse aide registry.