Advanced Practice Midwife: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Advanced practice midwifery encompasses the independent provision of care during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period; sexual and reproductive health; gynecologic health; and family planning services, including preconception care. Midwives also provide primary care for individuals from adolescence throughout the lifespan as well as care for the healthy newborn during the first 28 days of life. Midwives provide initial and ongoing comprehensive assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Midwifery care includes health promotion, disease prevention, risk assessment and management, and individualized wellness education and counseling.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

Of these records, 13.0% are flagged as sole proprietors in the self-reported NPPES field. This share is a descriptive indicator of how records are classified, but it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not establish ownership, employment, independence, or practice 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.
• - These are active NPI records, not necessarily a count of unique people, practices, or full-time clinicians.
• - NPPES taxonomy and sole-proprietor fields depend on reporting entities, updates, multiple taxonomies, and classification choices.
• - First-enumeration totals describe when NPIs were issued, not when providers began practicing, and should not be used alone to infer specialty growth.
• 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