General Acute Care Hospital: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

An acute general hospital is an institution whose primary function is to provide inpatient diagnostic and therapeutic services for a variety of medical conditions, both surgical and non-surgical, to a wide population group. The hospital treats patients in an acute phase of illness or injury, characterized by a single episode or a fairly short duration, from which the patient returns to his or her normal or previous level of activity.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 1,732 records, or 12.0%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. This field is self-reported and is not a direct ownership field, so the percentage is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not establish whether a hospital is independently owned or operated.

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.
• An NPI record does not necessarily represent one unique physical hospital, health system, or operating location.
• The primary taxonomy is an NPPES classification and may not capture every organization that provides acute general hospital services.
• 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