The decline of the solo practice
Among providers who joined the registry in 2005–2009, 29.9% registered as sole proprietors. For 2025–2029 it is 31.5%.
Share registering as sole proprietors, by the period they joined the registry
The registry does not record employment. It records whether someone enrolled as a sole proprietor, a yes/no question every applicant answers. Tracked against the period they joined, it becomes a usable proxy for a shift everyone in medicine talks about and very few people can put a number on.
How this was built
Sole-proprietor status comes from the NPPES Is Sole Proprietor field. Providers who left it blank are excluded.
The horizontal axis is when a provider joined the registry, not when they qualified. Someone who trained in 1990 but first enrolled in 2006 appears in 2005–09. Graduation year would be the honest axis, and it becomes available once the CMS Doctors and Clinicians file is loaded.
Enrolling as a sole proprietor is not the same as practising alone — a solo enrolment can still sit inside a larger group. Read this as a direction of travel, not a headcount.
Rebuilt 2026-09-15 from the CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System · more experiments