Eyewear Supplier: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

An organization that provides spectacles, contact lenses, and other vision enhancement devices prescribed by an optometrist or ophthalmologist.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For Eyewear Suppliers, 116 records, or 0.8%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. This percentage can inform questions about individual or privately structured practices, but the flag is self-reported and is an imperfect proxy for private practice because it does not capture every ownership arrangement or establish how a supplier operates.

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 listed as primary, not a census of every eyewear business, location, or professional.
• - Taxonomy assignments, NPI status, and enumeration data can change as NPPES records are 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