You came from Russia and fell ill: how to see a doctor in Armenia without a residence permit and without a public services number

If you need help right now, call 103 and do not put off the call because of documents, insurance or money: by law, emergency and urgent care must be provided to every person, regardless of whether payment for it is guaranteed (Law on Medical Aid and Services to the Population, articles 28 and 31). For insured people the ambulance (up to 8 calls a year) is paid for by the insurance, and for uninsured citizens of Armenia by the state; whether it is free for a foreigner without insurance is not stated directly in the current rules. Everything else — attachment to a polyclinic, the public services number, the electronic record — is about the long term, not about today. The two paths are separated below.

The only door that is always open and needs no documents

• 103 — ambulance. Around the clock, from mobile and landline phones. The average arrival time of a crew in Yerevan is 7 minutes, the maximum is 20 minutes (hartak.am, checked 29.09.2026).
• 911 or 112 — the unified rescue service. According to the same directory, 911 has operators who speak English; on the other emergency numbers this is not guaranteed.
• A hospital emergency department. You can come there yourself, without calling a crew.
• Paid crews of large medical centers are an option when transport or a specific hospital is needed. Verified phone numbers and a rough guide to the call price are collected on our /emergency page; the exact amount is quoted when you call.

Fork one: you need an appointment today

A private medical center sees patients without attachment, without a public services number and without a residence permit — for a fee. That is the working answer on the second day after moving. The task narrows down to three questions: who is nearby, who is open, and what language you will be spoken to in.

We did not come across a language-of-appointment field in any Armenian doctor catalogue we looked at ourselves — but we will not claim that it exists nowhere. Ours was collected by hand from doctors' profiles and works as an ordinary filter in the address bar: it can be combined with district and specialty.

Fork two: you are here for the long term

The state chain looks like this: residence status → registration at an address → public services number (PSN) → a contract with a polyclinic. No step can be skipped, and each one requires an in-person visit.

Two places where the official texts have to be read carefully. First: those who may attach to a polyclinic and choose a doctor are citizens of Armenia, people forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, stateless persons, refugees and asylum seekers, and foreigners with permanent or special residence status. A temporary residence permit is not named in this list. Second: the same state directory separately states that foreign citizens and stateless persons use primary medical care on a paid basis, unless Armenia's international treaties provide otherwise (the directory describes the rules in force before 2026; since 2026 primary care for an insured foreigner is paid for by the insurance — who among foreigners is insured is explained below). So attachment is about access and a medical record, not automatically about care being free.

A separate rule that is often confused with attachment: preventive vaccinations for epidemiological indications are given to citizens of Armenia and to foreigners and stateless persons living in the country regardless of registration, free of charge, with vaccines purchased by the state. This is written in the same directory and does not cancel the fact that the rest of the care is paid.

Why the advice to register on armed.am does not work for everyone

Russian-language guides unanimously recommend opening an account in the state ArMed system — it shows your polyclinic and your doctor, and lets you book online. The problem is that two official ArMed texts disagree. The instruction on corporate.armed.am still says that, for cybersecurity reasons, registration is possible only with an identification card (ID card). The registration form on armed.am, however, asks for your first and last name, public services number (social card), date of birth and phone number (both pages checked on 29.09.2026).

And the identification card, as described by the Migration and Citizenship Service, is a document certifying identity and citizenship of Armenia; RA citizens obtain it voluntarily from the age of 16, and it is valid for 10 years. A newcomer without Armenian citizenship does not have such a card, and under the Law on the Public Services Number a foreigner's number is recorded in their residence card. So in the first days after moving you cannot open an ArMed account either way. With a residence card and a public services number you can try the form on armed.am; if it does not work, the ArMed Customer Service Center works 24/7: +374 11 20 20 33. No state website states a direct ban saying that a foreigner may not use ArMed — this is our conclusion drawn from the official texts, and we present it exactly as a conclusion.

The workaround is simple and boring: call the organization directly. A phone number is in the profile of every clinic, hospital, pharmacy and laboratory in our catalogue — the front desk will book you an appointment without any online account.

State insurance (universal health insurance) and newcomers

This is easy to mix up. The state service directory hartak.am still describes the former state-order system, in which part of the care was free or came with a reduced co-payment. But Government Decision No. 318-N, on which that system rested, lost force as of 30 December 2025. Since 1 January 2026 universal health insurance has been introduced in stages, and for uninsured citizens of Armenia the state pays for a minimum volume of care (Decision No. 1974-N). For a foreigner, the insurance law is stricter.

• Under article 11 of the law, a foreigner holding a residence status provided for by law in Armenia falls under universal health insurance only if they belong to one of the four groups in part 2: employees whose salary is calculated by a tax agent (point 11); sole proprietors and notaries registered in Armenia (point 12); persons engaged in individual agricultural activity and, from 2027, taxi drivers (point 14); persons related to members of the groups in points 11–14 who are RA residents — voluntarily, upon application (point 15). These groups join in stages: from 2026 — employees earning 200,001 drams or more a month from at least one employer, and sole proprietors and notaries whose 2025 income exceeded 2.4 million drams (once they have paid the annual premium); from 2027 — other employees, sole proprietors and notaries, taxi drivers and, voluntarily, related persons under point 15; from 2028 — people engaged in individual agricultural activity (already from 2027 in settlements with affected status).
• Since 8 May 2026 this rule also extends to asylum seekers (in the procedure established by law) and to refugees granted asylum in Armenia who belong to the same four groups — this was added by the amending law HO-135-N of 7 April 2026; before that the rule did not apply to them. In other cases they use additional medical care services under this law and the Law on Refugees and Asylum.
• The law defines the concept of an RA resident separately (article 2, point 30): a person who has actually been in Armenia for 183 days or more during the twelve months preceding the insurance; the days of arrival and departure count as full days.
• The other groups — children, people 65+, people with disabilities and others — are tied in the law to Armenian citizenship.

The wording of the law is complex, and we will not interpret how it applies to a particular person: check your status with the Universal Health Insurance Fund (short number 8866). How the system works overall, who joins it and when, and what is covered is explained in our /insurance section.

Pharmacies and medicines

The catalogue has 537 pharmacies, 45 of which work around the clock — that is a separate filter, and at night it saves time: addresses and phone numbers are right in the list, or you can look at the map. In Armenia a prescription is written by a doctor at the appointment; in the state ArMed system prescriptions are issued electronically. You can check whether a particular medicine is registered in Armenia in the official list of registered medicinal products on pharm.am — it has a Russian version. We do not name any analogues, substitutes or medicine names: that is a conversation with a doctor or a pharmacist, not with a directory.

Tests and diagnostics

The /analyses section lists 61 laboratories. Honestly about the limits: opening hours and the accepts state insurance mark are visible right in the list, but you cannot filter by them yet — there are no around-the-clock or by-insurance filters in this section, the list is flat. Whether a referral is needed in your case — check with the laboratory itself using the phone number in its profile; we make no claim of our own about how this usually works. What is known from official sources: planned tests are covered by the insurance with a referral, which is issued by a family doctor or therapist (general practitioner), and a doctor can issue it electronically through ArMed. How much tests cost around the city we covered in separate articles: /blog/lab-test-cost-yerevan and /blog/mri-cost-yerevan.

In brief

• Feeling bad right now — 103, around the clock. Do not put off the call because of documents, insurance or money.
• Need an appointment today — a private clinic, paid, without attachment. Filters by language and district: /doctors, /clinics.
• Staying for the long term — residence status, address registration, public services number, polyclinic. Four in-person visits, all at the official addresses above.
• An ArMed account can be opened only with an Armenian ID card or a public services number; until you have one, call the front desk using the phone number in the profile.
• Universal health insurance applies to a foreigner only with a certain employment and residence status; check your own case with the Fund.