Independent Duty Corpsman: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

A Navy Independent Duty Corpsman (IDC) is an active duty Sailor who has successfully completed one of the Navy's specific IDC training programs. IDCs are formally trained and educated to perform primary medical care and minor surgical services in a variety of health care and non-health care settings worldwide under indirect physician supervision. IDCs provide care to Department of Defense operational forces and other supporting forces such as contractors and foreign nationals.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, the sole-proprietor share describes how the NPPES record is classified, not how many IDCs work in private practice. The field is self-reported and may reflect billing or organizational arrangements, so it is an imperfect proxy and does not establish employment status, practice ownership, or whether an IDC serves operational forces, supporting forces, or another setting.

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 NPIs with this taxonomy as the primary classification, so it excludes records listing Independent Duty Corpsman only as a secondary taxonomy.
• - NPI records are identifiers, not a guaranteed headcount of unique people or a measure of current clinical activity; records and classifications can change.
• 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