Nursing Care Agency: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

A Nursing Care Agency is an entity that provides skilled nursing care through the services of a Registered Nurse (RN) or a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), by employees, contracted individuals, or via a registry, in a variety of settings. The agency may engage in providing private duty nursing and/or staffing services.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 983 of the 7,662 active records, or 12.8%, carry the NPPES sole-proprietor flag. Because that field is self-reported, and because a nursing care agency may use employees, contracted nurses, or a registry, the percentage is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not describe the agency's full business 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 counts are records with the taxonomy as primary, not guaranteed counts of unique agencies or locations.
• - First-enumeration totals do not indicate when an agency began operations, whether it remains active, or why counts changed.
• 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