Customized Equipment (DME): how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 359 records, or 5.1%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. This is a self-reported field and an imperfect proxy for private practice because it does not by itself establish ownership, employment arrangement, independence, or whether a supplier operates alone.

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 covers active NPI records with this taxonomy as primary, not necessarily unique businesses, locations, or people.
• NUCC publishes no official definition for this taxonomy, so classification boundaries may be interpreted differently by submitters.
• 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