Acupuncturist: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

An acupuncturist is a person who performs ancient therapy for alleviation of pain, anesthesia and treatment of some diseases. Acupuncturists use long, fine needles inserted into specific points in order to treat painful conditions or produce anesthesia.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

Among acupuncturist records, 23,146, or 53.5%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. For this specialty, that figure can indicate how records report their business form, but it is a self-reported field and an imperfect proxy for private practice because it does not establish ownership, employment arrangement, or whether a clinician works independently.

By state

New NPI registrations by year

Counts reflect the year each NPI was first issued, among records still active today. The final year is partial: this data covers through 2026-01-11.

Data notes

• The sole-proprietor field is self-reported by the provider in NPPES and is an imperfect proxy for private practice.
• A sole-proprietor count shown as <11 is suppressed: the true value is below 11, which could include zero.
• - NPI records are administrative identifiers, so active records do not necessarily equal unique practicing acupuncturists.
• - The count is limited to records using Acupuncturist as the primary taxonomy and may not include providers who perform acupuncture under another primary classification.
• Providers are counted once, by their primary taxonomy code only.

Source: CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) Data Dissemination file, FOIA-disclosable public data under CMS-6060-N. Aggregated by Hero EMR on 2026-08-03; deactivated NPIs excluded; specialty assigned from the primary taxonomy code (NUCC 25.1). Counts below 11 are suppressed. Individual providers are never published. All provider data pages.

Common questions