Critical Access Hospital: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, the sole-proprietor share is a narrow view of how records are identified in NPPES: 107 records, or 3.7%, carry that self-reported flag. It should not be read as the share of Critical Access Hospitals in private practice, because the field may not capture ownership, affiliation, or the organization behind a hospital's billing structure.

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.
• An NPI record is not necessarily a unique hospital location, legal entity, or clinician, so these counts should not be treated as a census of facilities.
• NUCC publishes no official definition for this taxonomy, so classification coverage may depend on how organizations select and maintain taxonomy data.
• 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