The Illinois CNA Registry is the official state-maintained database administered by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) that verifies which nursing assistants are legally permitted to work in long-term care, hospitals, and home health agencies across the state. Every employer hiring a certified nursing assistant is required by federal and Illinois law to check this registry before the first shift, and your active status here is what separates a working CNA from one who cannot legally clock in.
If you are searching for the Illinois CNA registry, looking up your CNA license number, transferring credentials from another state, or trying to figure out how to renew before your status lapses, this pillar guide walks through every step. We cover eligibility, approved training programs, the competency exam, the lookup tool, renewal cycles, reciprocity, and what to do if your name is flagged or missing.
This page is written for prospective students, working nursing assistants, employers verifying staff, and out-of-state CNAs relocating to Illinois. Each section links to the related CNA practice tests and study resources so you can prepare alongside the administrative steps.
Illinois treats the registry as a single source of truth for nurse aide credentials, and IDPH cross-references it against background check results, training school reports, and employer payroll filings. A clean entry on this registry is what makes you employable in skilled nursing facilities, intermediate care facilities, and most home health agencies in the state.
The Illinois Nurse Aide Registry is the state's public-facing record of every certified nursing assistant who has completed an approved training program, passed the competency evaluation, and remains in good standing. It is operated by IDPH under federal OBRA-87 requirements that mandate every state run a registry of qualified nurse aides.
Records in the registry include your full legal name, certification number, training program completion date, last paid employment date, and any substantiated findings of abuse, neglect, or theft. The registry is queried millions of times each year by employers, regulators, and CNAs verifying their own standing.
Illinois maintains the registry through a contract with the Health Care Worker Registry, which combines nurse aide records with other long-term care worker credentials. The lookup tool is free, public, and available 24 hours a day through the IDPH website. You do not need an account to search.
Your placement on the registry is not the same as a license in the traditional sense. CNAs in Illinois are certified rather than licensed, but the registry entry functions as the legal proof of certification that employers rely on during hiring and routine audits.
Confirm age 16+, high school education, and pass the Illinois Healthcare Worker Background Check before enrolling.
Complete 120 hours at an IDPH-approved Basic Nursing Assistant Training Program — 80 classroom plus 40 clinical.
Score 75% or higher on the Illinois Nurse Aide Competency Examination — written plus five randomly selected skills.
SIU Carbondale reports your pass to IDPH and your name appears on the Illinois Nurse Aide Registry within 5-10 business days.
Work at least one paid CNA shift every 24 months to keep your registry entry active without retesting.
Illinois has one of the most clearly mapped paths to certification in the country. The process moves from approved training to competency testing to registry placement, and most candidates complete it in eight to sixteen weeks depending on the program's pace.
The minimum eligibility requirements set by IDPH include being at least sixteen years old, passing a criminal background check through the Healthcare Worker Background Check Program, providing proof of a high school education or current enrollment, and completing a state-approved Basic Nursing Assistant Training Program (BNATP).
Background check disqualifiers in Illinois are specific. Certain felony convictions trigger an automatic bar, while others allow you to apply for a waiver. If you have a conviction in your history, file the disclosure honestly when you enroll because employers will see the same record during their own checks.
The full journey breaks into five clean steps that nearly every Illinois CNA follows. Skipping any one of them puts your registry status at risk, and employers can spot incomplete records instantly during onboarding.
Only training programs approved by the Illinois Department of Public Health count toward registry eligibility. The current list includes community colleges, vocational schools, hospital-based academies, and a growing roster of online hybrid programs. Total clock hours must reach a minimum of 120, with at least 40 of those hours in supervised clinical practice.
Community college programs tend to run eight to twelve weeks and cost between $600 and $1,500. Private vocational schools may charge $1,000 to $2,500 but often offer evening and weekend cohorts. Hospital-based academies sometimes pay you a small stipend while you train, in exchange for a one-year work commitment after certification.
Online and hybrid programs deliver theory content through video lectures and self-paced modules, then schedule in-person clinical days at partner facilities. Verify before enrolling that the program is listed on the IDPH approved provider list, because non-approved coursework will not satisfy the registry's training requirement no matter how thorough it looks.
Apprenticeship pathways have grown rapidly in Illinois since 2022. The CNA Apprenticeship model combines paid on-the-job training with classroom instruction and lets you earn while you learn. Many large long-term care chains in Cook, DuPage, and Will counties now sponsor these positions, and the apprenticeship hours count toward your 120-hour training minimum.
85 multiple choice questions covering basic nursing skills, personal care, mental health, communication, infection control, and resident rights. 90 minutes total. Passing score is 75 percent. Oral version available on request for English language learners.
Five randomly selected nursing assistant tasks performed in front of an evaluator. Handwashing is always one of the five and acts as the gatekeeper skill. Other tasks may include vital signs, ambulation assistance, perineal care, feeding, or bedmaking with an occupied bed.
$65 for combined written and skills. $50 to retake written only. $65 to retake skills only. Three attempts within 24 months before full retraining is required.
After completing training, every candidate must pass the Illinois Nurse Aide Competency Examination, currently administered by Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The exam has two parts: a written or oral knowledge test and a manual skills demonstration.
The written portion contains eighty-five multiple choice questions covering basic nursing skills, personal care, mental health, communication, infection control, and resident rights. Candidates have ninety minutes to complete it. The passing score is 75 percent. If English is a barrier, you may request the oral version, which reads each question aloud.
The skills demonstration requires you to perform five randomly selected nursing assistant tasks in front of an evaluator. Handwashing is always one of the five and acts as the gatekeeper skill. Other possible tasks include measuring vital signs, assisting with ambulation, providing perineal care, and feeding a resident.
Costs as of 2026: $65 for the combined written and skills test, $50 to retake just the written, and $65 to retake just the skills. You get three attempts within a twenty-four month window before you must retrain entirely.
Preparing for the exam should not be guesswork. Working through structured questions on a CNA practice test mirrors the wording and pacing of the real assessment. Candidates who run at least three full practice tests before exam day report passing rates above 90 percent.
Search the IDPH Health Care Worker Registry by last name and date of birth. The system returns your certification number, status, training completion date, and last paid employment date. Free, public, and available 24 hours a day with no login required.
Finding your CNA license number is a five-second task once you know where to go. Open the IDPH Health Care Worker Registry lookup, enter your last name and date of birth, and the system returns your full record including certification number, status, and last verification date.
If your name has changed since certification, search under your maiden or previous legal name. The registry only updates name fields when you submit a name change request with documentation, so married CNAs sometimes search for a year before realizing the system still has them under their old surname.
Common reasons your record may not appear include: certification under fifteen days old and still processing, training completion not yet reported by your school, an outstanding background check issue, or a typo in your date of birth at the time of application. None of these are dead ends — most resolve with a phone call to the Nurse Aide Registry hotline.
Employers verifying current staff should use the same public lookup tool. There is no separate employer portal in Illinois. Many facilities print the registry confirmation as a PDF and store it in the employee's HR file as proof of due diligence.
Illinois does not require CNAs to retake the competency exam every cycle. Instead, registry status stays active as long as you work at least one paid shift as a nursing assistant within any twenty-four month period and that shift is documented through an employer who reports to the registry.
If you go twenty-four consecutive months without a paid CNA shift, your status changes to inactive. To restore it, you must retake the full competency examination — both knowledge and skills sections — but you do not need to repeat the 120 hours of training as long as your training record is still on file.
There is no renewal fee in Illinois. The state does not charge a periodic certification fee, which makes it one of the most affordable states to maintain CNA status. Some employers charge for in-service training that satisfies continuing education recommendations, but these are optional, not state requirements.
To prevent lapses, many CNAs working in non-clinical roles pick up one PRN shift every twelve months at a local facility just to keep the registry clock running. This is a common strategy among nursing students who want to preserve their CNA credential while in BSN or ADN programs.
If you are already certified in another state, Illinois honors your credentials through a process called reciprocity or endorsement. You do not retake the exam. You file a Reciprocity Application with IDPH, pay the small processing fee, and submit verification from your current state's registry.
Required documents for reciprocity include a completed CNA Reciprocity Application, proof of current active status in your home state's registry, verification of training hours that meet or exceed Illinois requirements, a passed background check through the Illinois Healthcare Worker Background Check Program, and government-issued photo ID.
Processing time runs four to eight weeks during normal volume, sometimes longer when applications spike in late summer. You can work in Illinois once IDPH issues your certification number, not before. Working as a CNA without an active Illinois registry entry is a misdemeanor and exposes employers to fines.
States with the smoothest reciprocity into Illinois include Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Michigan because their training requirements closely match the 120-hour Illinois standard. Candidates from states with lower training minimums occasionally have to complete supplemental coursework before approval.
Illinois employs roughly 78,000 active certified nursing assistants across long-term care facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, and rehabilitation centers. Demand is strongest in Cook County, the collar counties, and the Metro East region near St. Louis. Rural central Illinois has chronic shortages and often offers sign-on bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $3,000.
Average wages as of 2026 sit at $17.50 per hour statewide, with Chicago-area facilities paying $19 to $22 and downstate rates closer to $15 to $17. Travel CNA contracts pay $25 to $32 per hour with stipends layered on top. Agency CNAs typically earn the highest hourly rate but trade off benefits and predictable scheduling.
The legal CNA-to-patient ratio in Illinois long-term care facilities is set by the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act and varies by shift and acuity level. Day shift commonly requires one CNA per ten residents, evening shift one per fifteen, and overnight one per twenty. Facilities found understaffed face fines and corrective action from the state.
CNA agencies in Illinois include both staffing firms and home-care registries. Staffing agencies place you in facility shifts; home-care registries connect you directly with private clients. Both require active registry status and most also require liability insurance, which runs about $90 per year through professional associations.
Illinois CNA certification is a launchpad, not a ceiling. Many CNAs use the credential to fund and accelerate further nursing education. Common next steps include certified medication aide (CMA), patient care technician (PCT), licensed practical nurse (LPN), and registered nurse (RN) pathways.
The CMA add-on certification adds medication administration skills and increases hourly pay by $2 to $4. Several Illinois community colleges offer LPN bridge programs that accept CNA work experience as clinical credit, shaving months off the standard LPN timeline. RN bridge programs typically require LPN completion first but accept CNA hours as foundational nursing experience.
If long-term care is your goal, consider specialty certifications in dementia care, restorative care, or hospice. These do not change your registry entry but boost both pay and employability. Facilities increasingly require dementia training for any CNA working memory care units.
Dementia care certifications, often delivered through the Alzheimer's Association or facility-led programs, satisfy state-level memory-care staffing rules and unlock higher-acuity unit assignments. Restorative care training prepares you to work alongside physical and occupational therapists, extending therapy gains into daily care.
Hospice and palliative care certifications open doors at home-hospice agencies, where one-on-one care assignments often pay $2 to $5 more per hour than facility shifts. Telehealth-adjacent roles for CNAs are emerging in Illinois too — remote patient monitoring vendors hire experienced nurse aides to triage alerts and coach patients.
Usually a reporting delay from your training school or SIU Carbondale. Allow 10 business days from your test date. After 15 days, contact your training program — they hold the direct reporting line to IDPH.
Triggered by 24 months without a reported paid shift. Restore by retaking the full competency examination — knowledge plus skills. Pay $65 exam fee. Your original 120 training hours stay on file and do not need repeating.
Findings of abuse, neglect, or theft stay on the registry permanently and end CNA employability. Request a formal administrative hearing within 30 days of notification if you believe the finding was placed in error.
Submit a Name Change Request with marriage certificate, divorce decree, or court order to IDPH. Until update posts, search registry under previous legal name.
Registry problems fall into three categories: missing entry, inactive status, and substantiated findings. Each has a different remedy and a different timeline.
A missing entry usually means your training school has not yet reported your competency exam pass to IDPH, or your exam score is still being processed by SIU Carbondale. Allow ten business days from the test date before calling. If your record is still absent after fifteen business days, contact your training program first — they have the direct reporting line to IDPH.
Inactive status means you have crossed the twenty-four-month employment gap without a reported paid shift. The only path back is to retake the full competency examination. Schedule a new test date, pay the $65 exam fee, and your registry entry will be restored to active immediately upon passing both sections.
A substantiated finding of abuse, neglect, or theft is the most serious entry on a registry record. Findings stay on the registry permanently and effectively end your CNA career in Illinois because no employer will hire from a flagged registry. If you believe a finding was wrongly placed, you have thirty days from the date of notification to request a formal administrative hearing.
Name changes after marriage or divorce do not automatically update the registry. Submit a Name Change Request with documentation — marriage certificate, divorce decree, or court order — to IDPH. Until the update posts, search the registry under your previous legal name.
Illinois employers must verify registry status before hire and at minimum annually thereafter. The verification process is simple and free — search the IDPH Health Care Worker Registry by full name and date of birth, then print or screenshot the result for the employee's personnel file.
If a current employee's status flips to inactive mid-employment, remove them from CNA shifts immediately. Continuing to schedule them as a CNA exposes the facility to state fines and loss of Medicaid certification.
Your status on the Illinois Nurse Aide Registry is the single most important professional record you maintain as a CNA in this state. Check it at least once a year, update your address and contact information when they change, and report any disputed entries within thirty days. The registry exists to protect residents, but it also protects you by providing a clean, verifiable employment record.
For ongoing exam prep and skills review, work through the full library of CNA practice tests available on PracticeTestGeeks. Each set mirrors the structure of the Illinois competency exam and includes the skill scenarios most likely to appear on test day.