Midwife: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

A Midwife is a trained professional with special expertise in supporting women to maintain a healthy pregnancy birth, offering expert individualized care, education, counseling, and support to a woman and her newborn throughout the childbearing cycle. A Midwife is a skilled and independent practitioner who has undergone formalized training. Midwives are not required to be nurses and may be trained via multiple routes of education (apprenticeship, workshop, formal classes, or programs, etc., usually a combination). The educational background requirements and licensing requirements vary by state. The Midwife may or may not be certified by a state or national organization.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, the 43.9% share means that 2,969 active Midwife NPI records are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. Because the flag is a self-reported NPPES field, it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not by itself show whether a midwife owns, operates, or works independently in a 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.
• - An NPI record is an identifier and may not represent one distinct practicing midwife or a currently delivered service.
• - NPPES taxonomy, address, and sole-proprietor fields are reported and can change, so they may not match current licensure, practice arrangements, or service location.
• - State totals use NPPES record information and do not necessarily show where care is delivered or capture every midwife's full practice footprint.
• 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