Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC): how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 45 of 13,362 active records, or 0.3%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. That is a self-reported NPPES field, so it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and should not be read as a direct measure of ownership, independence, or practice setting. The flag may not capture an FQHC's full legal or operating structure.

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 taxonomy and status fields can change, so this is a time-specific view of active records.
• An NPI record does not necessarily represent one distinct physical facility, and one organization may have multiple records.
• An enumeration year records when an NPI was assigned, not when a facility opened or began serving patients.
• 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