Surgical Physician Assistant: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 2,690 of the 17,449 active records, or 15.4%, carry the sole-proprietor flag. Because the flag is a self-reported NPPES field, it is an imperfect proxy for private practice: it does not by itself show ownership, employment arrangement, or billing structure, and these counts do not establish why the share is what it is.

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.
• NPI totals are administrative record counts and should not automatically be interpreted as counts of unique people.
• Primary taxonomy assignments are reported in NPPES and may not capture every clinician who performs surgical physician assistant work or may change over time.
• First-enumeration counts indicate when an NPI was issued, not necessarily when a clinician began practicing or entered this specialty.
• 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