Hearing Instrument Specialist: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Individuals who test hearing for the selection, adaptation, fitting, adjusting, servicing, and sale of hearing aids. Hearing Instrument Specialist is a designation provided individuals who qualify by the National Hearing Aid Society

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 2,201 records, or 18.2%, carry the sole-proprietor flag in NPPES. That flag is a self-reported NPPES field and an imperfect proxy for private practice because it does not by itself show whether a specialist owns a practice, works independently, or operates within a larger organization.

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.
• - Counts refer to active NPI records with this taxonomy as the primary classification, not a complete census of people providing hearing services.
• - NPI records are administrative records and may differ from the number of specialists currently practicing.
• - Enumeration-year counts show when NPIs were first issued, not necessarily when a specialist began practicing.
• 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