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

National totals

What this specialty covers

An individual educated and trained in an applied knowledge discipline used in the performance of work at a level requiring knowledge and skills beyond or apart from that provided by a general education or liberal arts degree.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, the sole-proprietor share is 28.7%, meaning 28,192 active NPI records with Specialist as their primary taxonomy are flagged that way in NPPES. This self-reported field is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not by itself establish whether a provider works in private practice, owns a practice, or is employed by an 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.
• - Counts refer to active NPI records whose primary taxonomy is Specialist, not a guaranteed count of unique individual providers.
• - Providers may have multiple NPIs or taxonomies, and NPPES records and taxonomy selections can be updated.
• 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