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

National totals

What this specialty covers

Opticians help fit eyeglasses and contact lenses, following prescriptions from Ophthalmologists and Optometrists. They also help customers decide which eyeglass frame or contact lenses to buy.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this optician classification, the reported 27.3% means that 3,617 of 13,253 active records are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. Because the field is self-reported, it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not verify whether an optician works independently or within a larger organization.

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.
• The count includes active NPI records with Optician as the primary taxonomy; records using this taxonomy only as a secondary classification are not included.
• NPI records are an administrative measure, not a direct headcount of unique working opticians or practice locations.
• 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