Family Medicine Physician: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Family Medicine is the medical specialty which is concerned with the total health care of the individual and the family. It is the specialty in breadth which integrates the biological, clinical, and behavioral sciences. The scope of family medicine is not limited by age, sex, organ system, or disease entity.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 29,447 active records, or 14.9%, carry the sole-proprietor flag, so the figure describes a recorded designation rather than a complete count of family medicine clinicians in private practice. The flag is a self-reported NPPES field and is an imperfect proxy: it does not by itself establish ownership, employment arrangement, or whether a clinician works in a private practice.

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-record counts and should not be treated as a direct count of unique clinicians or practices.
• State counts reflect NPI-associated registration information, while first-enumeration counts do not measure new entrants, service volume, or patient location.
• 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