Surgical Technologist: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Surgical technologists are allied health professionals, who are an integral part of the team of medical practitioners providing surgical care to patients. Surgical technologists work under the supervision of a surgeon to facilitate the safe and effective conduct of invasive surgical procedures, ensuring that the operating room environment is safe, that equipment functions properly, and that the operative procedure is conducted under conditions that maximize patient safety. Surgical technologists possess expertise in the theory and application of sterile and aseptic technique and combine the knowledge of human anatomy, surgical procedures, and implementation tools and technologies to facilitate a physician's performance of invasive therapeutic and diagnostic procedures.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, the sole-proprietor share is 647 of 2,175 records, or 29.7%, so it describes the proportion of listed Surgical Technologist NPI records carrying that flag. Because the flag is self-reported NPPES data, it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not by itself establish employment arrangement, ownership, independence, or current clinical activity.

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 is an identifier for a provider or entity, so active-record counts are not necessarily counts of unique people, jobs, or currently practicing clinicians.
• - This page counts records with Surgical Technologist as the primary taxonomy; a provider may have other taxonomies, and taxonomy information can change over time.
• 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