National Pediatrics Supply by State — NPPES 2026 Snapshot

Pediatrician supply has been a recurring theme in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) workforce literature for a decade. The AAP Pediatric Workforce Statement and follow-on policy commentary have repeatedly flagged geographic maldistribution of pediatricians: low-density rural states often have fewer than half the per-capita supply of high-density Northeast metros, while child poverty rates and chronic-condition prevalence run higher in the supply-poor states.

Child health outcomes — well-child visit completion, vaccination rates, asthma management, ADHD diagnosis and follow-up — track pediatrician density with consistent gradient effects in the peer-reviewed literature. Capacity matters at the low end: a rural county with no pediatrician routes child sick visits to family-medicine physicians or pediatric-trained APPs, which works for many cases but loses material capacity for complex chronic-condition management.

This study reports what the public NPPES dataset shows: every active NPI-1 pediatrician (NUCC parent code 208000000X — Pediatrics) bucketed by Practice Address state and divided by U.S. Census Bureau 2024-vintage state population. It is a density measurement at state granularity — not a child-health-outcomes study, and not a count of all pediatric-care providers.

Source. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) — the public NPI Registry. Every U.S. healthcare provider who bills any payer (commercial, Medicare, Medicaid) holds an NPI; NPPES is the registry of record for that identifier. The public API at https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api/?version=2.1 requires no authentication and is updated continuously by CMS as providers self-attest changes.

Counted (kept). Each provider in our snapshot meets all three criteria:

1. Type 1 NPI (individual practitioner). Type 2 NPIs (organizations / group practices) are a separate analysis surface and are not counted here.

2. Active — basic.status = "A" and basic.deactivation_date is null.

3. At least one Healthcare Provider Taxonomy code in the pediatrics family:

   • 208000000X — Pediatrics (parent)
   • 2080A0000X — Pediatrics, Adolescent Medicine
   • 2080P0006X — Pediatrics, Developmental — Behavioral Pediatrics
   • 2080P0008X — Pediatrics, Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
   • 2080N0001X — Pediatrics, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
   • 2080P0202X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Cardiology
   • 2080P0203X — Pediatrics, Child Abuse Pediatrics
   • 2080P0204X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Emergency Medicine
   • 2080P0205X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology
   • 2080P0206X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Endocrinology
   • 2080P0207X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology (alt)
   • 2080P0208X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Infectious Diseases
   • 2080P0210X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Pulmonology
   • 2080P0214X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Rheumatology
   • 2080P0216X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Sports Medicine
   • 2080I0007X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Infectious Diseases (alt)
   • 2080S0010X — Pediatrics, Sleep Medicine
   • 2080S0012X — Pediatrics, Sports Medicine
   • 2080T0002X — Pediatrics, Pediatric Transplant Hepatology
   • 2080H0002X — Pediatrics, Hospice and Palliative Medicine

This study counts only physicians whose primary NPPES taxonomy is the parent pediatrics code (208000000X). Pediatric subspecialties (Pediatric Cardiology 2080P0202X, Pediatric Endocrinology 2080P0006X, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine 2080P0008X, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology 2080P0207X, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine 2080N0001X, Pediatric Emergency Medicine 2080P0210X, etc.) carry their own codes and are out of scope — they're separate sub-specialty supply questions. Pediatric nurse practitioners (363LP0200X), family-medicine physicians who provide pediatric care, and pediatric APPs are out of scope and would be a separate study.

State assignment. Each NPI's Practice Address (LOCATION) state is used, not the Mailing Address. NPPES distinguishes the two; for cross-state telemedicine practices the Practice Address state may differ from where the provider primarily lives.

Not counted. Providers with deactivated NPIs, providers whose only pediatrics-adjacent taxonomy is outside the codes above, residents and fellows whose primary taxonomy is the "Student" code (390200000X), and providers without a U.S. Practice Address.

The national rate of 9.82 active pediatricians per 100,000 residents is a single number; the state spread is what consumers, providers, and policy readers actually feel.

Top 5 by density:

• District of Columbia — 57.96 / 100k (n=407)
• Massachusetts — 19.77 / 100k (n=1,411)
• Delaware — 18.92 / 100k (n=199)
• Missouri — 16.40 / 100k (n=1,024)
• Ohio — 15.58 / 100k (n=1,851)

Bottom 5 by density:

• Wyoming — 1.53 / 100k (n=9)
• Idaho — 4.15 / 100k (n=83)
• Kansas — 4.31 / 100k (n=128)
• Nevada — 4.99 / 100k (n=163)
• Alaska — 5.00 / 100k (n=37)

The lowest-density state holds approximately 3% of the highest-density jurisdiction's per-capita supply. The chart below shows the full ranking; the dashed marker is the 8-per-100k threshold this study uses to flag underserved jurisdictions.

20 jurisdictions rank below the 8 active pediatricians per 100,000 residents threshold this study uses to flag underserved jurisdictions. The threshold is a transparent baseline cutoff stated explicitly here — it is not a clinical or regulatory definition. Stated baseline cutoff aligned with American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) workforce literature, which has long flagged the ~8 pediatricians per 100,000 total population mark as a workforce-adequacy concern (equivalent to roughly 30 per 100,000 children, the standard child-denominator AAP benchmark). We apply the threshold to total state population because Census 2024 vintage total state population is the consistent denominator across this study series. Stated explicitly here; not a clinical or regulatory definition.

The states below the threshold collectively hold 61,856,258 residents — about 18.2% of the U.S. population.

Important framing. "Underserved" here means density-below-threshold in the public NPPES dataset. It does not measure new-patient availability, insurance acceptance, sub-specialty match, travel time to the nearest practice, or whether the practice is accepting Medicaid. Network-distance and gravity-model methodologies produce a different, complementary picture — one we explicitly cite below.

Density per 100,000 residents is the most transparent supply baseline. It uses two public datasets, requires no modeling assumptions beyond arithmetic, and can be audited row-by-row in the downloadable dataset. Every reader can audit the numbers themselves.

It is not spatial access. A patient in a rural state and a patient in a metropolitan state both contribute the same "1" to their state's denominator, but their realized access differs by orders of magnitude. Headline figures derived from network-distance models (e.g. "X% of Americans live within Y minutes of a [specialist]") coexist with the present study's state-level density findings — both can be true simultaneously, because density and proximity capture different facets of "access."

The healthcare workforce literature has more advanced approaches:

• Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA) and gravity models treat access as a function of provider supply, population demand, and distance decay. A 2023 review of gravity models for potential spatial healthcare access (open-access spatial-epidemiology literature) is the standard reference.
• Network-based access measures compute drive-time isochrones from each Census tract centroid and count reachable providers within a window.

This study does not implement E2SFCA, gravity, or network distance. It reports state-level density and acknowledges the gap. Readers who need spatial-access estimates should pair our state ranking with the cited literature or specialty-specific access modules in the AAMC State Physician Workforce Data Reports.

Public-health relevance. The AAP and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) jointly track pediatric workforce supply against U.S. child-health outcomes. Lower pediatrician density correlates with delayed well-child visits, lower vaccination completion rates, and reduced access to specialty pediatric care for children with chronic conditions — particularly in rural counties where the marginal value of one additional pediatrician is highest.

Capacity-expansion vehicles flagged in the pediatric workforce literature: pediatric nurse practitioners (PNPs, NUCC code 363LP0200X), retail-clinic pediatric APPs, school-based health centers, and telemedicine for routine well-child follow-up. None of these alters the NPI-1 pediatrician count this study tracks — but each materially changes patient-facing capacity.

Citation transparency. This study makes no clinical claims about any individual provider. The density-to-outcomes link is documented in the pediatric-policy literature; we cite it as context for why density matters, not as a finding our dataset proves.

Most state-level pediatrics supply numbers in circulation come from one of three places: (1) the AAMC State Physician Workforce reports, which use specialty-society membership and AMA Masterfile cross-references; (2) commercial workforce-data vendors that license those underlying datasets; or (3) press-release figures from advocacy organizations.

This study is different in three concrete ways:

1. Single public source family. Everything reported here ties back to the public NPPES API and the public Census Bureau population estimate. Both are free. Both are updated on cadences CMS and Census publish. Anyone with a web browser can re-run the underlying queries.
2. Record-level traceability. Every provider in the count has an NPI. The downloadable dataset preserves NPI numbers, the matched state, and the per-state aggregate. A reader auditing a specific state's count can pull the corresponding NPI list, look each one up in NPPES, and audit the active-pediatrics-taxonomy criterion themselves.
3. No quality attestation. Fonteum does not run a checking process for individual pediatricians. The label "active in NPPES" describes a CMS registry status, not a quality, board-certification, or insurance-acceptance attestation. Patients who need clinical confirmation should consult the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) registry for board-certification status and their insurer's directory for in-network availability.

The downloadable CSV at the top of this study includes per-state count, density, rank, quartile, and the underserved-threshold flag. The downloadable JSON adds the snapshot metadata and source URLs.

Suggested citation:

Ownlisted Research. (2026). National Pediatrics Supply by State — NPPES 2026 Snapshot. Ownlisted. Retrieved from https://fonteum.com/research/pediatrics-supply-by-state-2026

Reuse and attribution. Charts, tables, and the downloadable CSV / JSON may be cited or reproduced with attribution to Ownlisted Research and a link to this study. Carry the snapshot date (2026-05-06) so readers know the dataset version. Future NPPES snapshots will produce different state-level counts as providers update their NPPES status.

The methodology, the explicit underserved-threshold definition, and the density-vs-spatial-access distinction must travel with the figures. Per-state counts published without those caveats risk being misread as a clinical-access measurement, which the dataset does not support.

Press / media inquiries. Reach the Ownlisted Research team via the brand-hub contact page. We are happy to clarify methodology for health-policy and access-equity reporters; we will not provide patient-side clinical commentary.

Cited literature (suggested for follow-up reading):

• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — most recent Pediatric Workforce Statement and AAP workforce policy commentary on U.S. pediatrician supply.
• U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Pediatric workforce projections and Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) designations relevant to pediatric primary care.
• Peer-reviewed pediatric workforce studies (e.g., Pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, Health Affairs) on density-to-outcomes linkage in child health-care delivery.
• Gravity models for potential spatial healthcare access (2023). Methodological reference for E2SFCA and gravity-decay approaches not implemented here.

• Density is not spatial access. Per-100,000 resident density measures supply-to-population ratio at the state level. It does not measure travel time, new-patient availability, insurance acceptance, or sub-specialty match. Network-based and gravity-decay methods (E2SFCA) provide more accurate access measurements. We have not implemented those methods.
• NPPES taxonomies are self-reported. Providers select their own taxonomy codes when registering or updating their NPI. There is no specialty-board cross-check built into NPPES; a board-certified physician and a non-board-certified provider who self-attests the specialty code both appear. Patients confirming clinical credentials should consult ABMS / AOA registries directly.
• Practice Address state, not where the provider lives or practices most. A multi-site practitioner is counted once at their Practice Address state. Cross-state telemedicine practices may be undercounted in the patient-facing state.
• Active-flag accuracy. NPPES updates active/deactivated status as providers self-attest. Some providers carry stale NPIs from earlier career stages. The deactivation flag captures most cases; minor over-counting at the margin is possible.
• Census ACS 2024 vintage uncertainty. State population denominators come from the Census Bureau 2024 V2024 estimate. ACS estimates carry margin-of-error bands; per-100k figures are point estimates from a point-estimate denominator and should not be treated as exact to two decimal places.
• No procedure-mix or sub-specialty breakout. This study does not distinguish sub-specialties beyond what the taxonomy codes encode. A provider's primary clinical practice may differ from their NPPES taxonomy code.
• Type 2 (organization) NPIs excluded. Hospital-employed pediatricians who only operate under a Type 2 organization NPI are under-counted. Most pediatricians carry both, so the under-count effect is small but non-zero.
• No outcomes / quality-of-care claims. This study reports NPPES-listed counts and Census-derived densities. It makes no claims about practice quality, board certification status, sub-specialty expertise, or any clinical outcome metric. This is not medical advice. Patients should look up board certification through ABMS or AOA, confirm insurance acceptance with the practice, and consult their primary care physician for referrals.
• Snapshot in time. Counts reflect the 2026-05-06 NPPES snapshot. The cached dataset is preserved at data/nppes/pediatrics-2026-05-06.json for re-analysis.
• Type 1 NPPES enumeration only — material under-count for pediatricians. Counts here reflect individually-enumerated providers (NPI Type 1). Pediatricians practicing in hospital pediatrics, FQHC, school-based health centers, and large group-practice settings frequently register under a Type 2 organization NPI only and are not captured here. The standard Type-2-exclusion bullet above understates the pediatric under-count: hospital-employed and academic pediatricians are over-represented in this specialty relative to others, which is why AAP's published ~70k workforce headline is materially larger than our 33,410 even with the full 2080* family included. Per-capita figures here should be read as a defensible floor on individually-enumerated pediatric supply, not a workforce census. The state-level ranking remains robust because the Type-1-only filter applies uniformly across jurisdictions.