Acute Care Nurse Practitioner: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 21.1% of active primary-taxonomy NPI records carry the sole-proprietor flag in NPPES. That self-reported field is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not by itself identify ownership, employment arrangement, clinical independence, or care setting.

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.
• - NPPES fields are reported by registrants and can be incomplete, outdated, or interpreted differently; the sole-proprietor flag is not a direct measure of private-practice status.
• - A taxonomy is not a complete description of a clinician's work, and these figures count records with this as the primary taxonomy.
• - First-enumeration year reflects NPI timing, not the start of practice or a change in specialty; NUCC publishes no official definition for this 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