Psychiatric Hospital Unit: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

In general, a distinct unit of a hospital that provides acute or long-term care to emotionally disturbed patients, including patients admitted for diagnosis and those admitted for treatment of psychiatric problems on the basis of physicians' orders and approved nursing care plans. Long-term care may include intensive supervision to the chronically mentally ill, mentally disordered or other mentally incompetent persons; (2) For Medicare, a distinct part of a general acute care hospital admitting only patients whose admission to the unit is required for active treatment, whose treatment is of an intensity that can be provided only in an inpatient hospital setting, and whose condition is described by a psychiatric principal diagnosis contained in the Third Edition of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or in Chapter 5 (Mental Disorders) of the Internationa

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 74 records, or 2.9%, 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 establish ownership, independence, or whether a unit operates within a hospital.

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 can represent an individual or organization and does not necessarily correspond to a single physical psychiatric hospital unit.
• The primary taxonomy is an NPPES classification selected by the reporting entity; a record may have additional taxonomies, and classifications can change.
• NPI enumeration timing does not by itself show when a unit opened, began operating, or changed ownership.
• 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