Free tool · CMS NPPES NPI Registry

NPI Registry Lookup — NPI Number & Dr Name Search

Search the NPI Registry — the public CMS NPPES National Plan and Provider Enumeration System — free. Run a national provider identifier lookup, physician NPI lookup, or doctor name search by NPI number, name (with or without the “Dr” prefix), organization, specialty, or taxonomy. The response identifies NPPES and its request timestamp; individual result fields can be null.

What is the NPI Registry?

The NPI Registry is the public, searchable face of NPPES— the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) uses to assign and store NPIs for eligible, enumerated individuals and organizations. CMS operates the official registry at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov. It is an administrative identifier record: public fields can include name, NPI, enumeration type, taxonomy, registered address, and record dates. Field availability varies, and the record does not establish licensure or credentialing. It carries no patient information.

You can search the registry three ways: by the 10-digit NPI number for an exact match, by provider or organization name, or by specialty / taxonomy to narrow a common name. The data is U.S. Government-Works (public domain), so searching it is free and needs no account or API key. This tool queries the live NPPES API at request time. The returned record reflects what that API supplied for the request; NPPES fields are provider-submitted and can lag real-world changes.

The lookup response contains NPPES fields and an optional MIPS overlay only. It does not query OIG LEIE, SAM.gov, PECOS, or the supported loaded state Medicaid lists. Use the separate screening workflow for the loaded exclusion sources, and consult the provider profile for any separately available PECOS or program-integrity blocks. Source and observation metadata vary by those responses.

Search by doctor name

This tool accepts physician names with or without a “Dr” or “Dr.”prefix. Typing “Dr Sarah Chen” is equivalent to typing “Sarah Chen” — the honorific is stripped automatically before the CMS NPPES query runs. The same applies to “Doctor” spelled out.

This MD NPI lookup, DO NPI search, and general physician NPI lookup covers records currently returned by NPPES — individual practitioners (Type 1) and organizations (Type 2). Use the provider type filter to restrict results to individuals when doing a doctor NPI search by name.

For common names, adding a specialty — for example, “Sarah Chen Cardiology” — helps narrow the results without leaving the search box.

What is an NPI number, and how does NPI lookup work?

A National Provider Identifier (NPI)is a unique 10-digit number issued to healthcare providers in the United States by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). It was created under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 and has been mandatory for covered providers since 2007. The NPI replaced the patchwork of older provider numbers — Medicare UPINs and other program-specific IDs — with a national identifier for HIPAA standard transactions. The NPI identifies the enumerated individual or organization in a transaction; it does not establish licensure, credentialing, or payer enrollment.

An NPI lookup is the reverse operation: you have an NPI number — or a provider name — and you want the record behind it. Because the NPI is a public identifier with no private patient information attached, the federal registry that stores it is public. Depending on the record, a search can return the submitted name, taxonomy, registered address, enumeration type, and record dates. None of this is protected health information; it is administrative data submitted to NPPES, not a licensure or credentialing determination.

The NPI is intelligence-free: its first nine digits do not encode provider type, specialty, licensure, or geography. The tenth is a check digit calculated with the Luhn algorithm. That is why a mistyped NPI is usually caught instantly: change one digit and the check digit no longer matches, so the number is recognizably invalid before any database is ever queried. Fonteum validates the check digit on the client before sending an exact-match lookup, which is why an obviously wrong number returns a clear error rather than an empty result page.

New to NPIs? Read what an NPI number is, what NPI stands for, and how to confirm an NPI step by step.

NPI Type 1 vs Type 2: individuals and organizations

Every NPI is one of two kinds, and knowing which one you are looking at changes how you read the result.

A Type 1 NPI (NPI-1) belongs to an eligible individual healthcare provider. An enumerated person can hold only one Type 1 NPI for their entire career, even if they move states, change employers, or add specialties. In the registry, a Type 1 record carries a first and last name, an optional credential string such as MD, DO, or NP, and a primary taxonomy code that describes the clinician’s specialty.

A Type 2 NPI (NPI-2) belongs to an eligible organization or subpart — such as a group practice, hospital, clinic, pharmacy, laboratory, or supplier. Organizations may hold more than one Type 2 NPI. A Type 2 record carries an organization name and an authorized official instead of a personal name. When you run a doctor name search and get a clinic back, you are seeing a Type 2 record; when you search a clinic name and get a person, the filter needs adjusting. The provider-type filter on this tool lets you restrict results to individuals or organizations so a common name does not bury the clinician you want under a list of group practices.

The same physician often appears in both forms: once as their own Type 1 NPI, and again as the authorized official or rendering provider under a Type 2 group. Reading the entity type on each result is the fastest way to tell the clinician apart from the business they bill under.

How to find your own NPI number

If you are a provider and you have lost or forgotten your NPI, you do not need to apply for a new one — you almost certainly already have it, and it is searchable. Type your own name into the search box above, add your state or specialty if your name is common, and your Type 1 record will appear with the 10-digit number. Because the registry is public, this works whether or not you still have access to the original enrollment email.

To changethe information attached to your NPI — a new address, a corrected specialty, a name change after marriage — you sign in to the official NPPES system at nppes.cms.hhs.gov with the CMS Identity & Access (I&A) credentials tied to your record. Fonteum is a read-only window onto the public registry; it cannot edit a provider’s record, and no third-party site can. Only the provider, through NPPES, can update what the registry shows.

If you have never been issued an NPI and you are an eligible provider, you apply for one free of charge through NPPES — there is no cost to obtain or maintain an NPI. New numbers are typically enumerated within a few business days, after which they become visible in the public registry and, from there, in this lookup.

The data sources behind this lookup

The official NPI Registry shows you NPPES and nothing else. Fonteum starts with the same NPPES record and can overlay one locally loaded CMS QPP MIPS row when present. The lookup response does not cross-reference PECOS or exclusion tables. It carries a response-level NPPES source envelope; individual result fields can be null and do not each carry a separate source chip.

• NPPES — the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System, the federal system of record for assigned NPIs. Public administrative fields can include name, taxonomy, registered address, enumeration type, and record dates; availability varies.
• CMS PECOS — the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System, the federal record of whether a provider is enrolled to bill Medicare. On a provider profile, PECOS supplies the Medicare enrollment status.
• OIG LEIE— the Office of Inspector General’s List of Excluded Individuals and Entities. A match here means the provider has been excluded from federal healthcare programs; the profile shows whether an active exclusion is on record for the NPI.
• CMS QPP MIPS— the Quality Payment Program’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System final scores. Where a clinician participated, Fonteum overlays their federal quality score as a performance signal.

State licensing boards sit outside this set by design: licensing data is fragmented across 50 states with no common bulk format, so Fonteum does not represent license status as a single national field. Where a provider record needs a license confirmation, the authoritative source remains the relevant state board. Fonteum joins by NPI only where the source publishes it; other sources retain their own keys and limitations.

Medicare provider lookup

A Medicare provider lookup almost always starts with the NPI, because the NPI is the same number Medicare prints on claims and remittances. Resolve the NPI here to confirm the provider’s identity, specialty, and registered location from NPPES, then open the provider profile to read the CMS PECOS enrollment status. PECOS is the federal system that records whether a provider is enrolled to bill Medicare and in what capacity.

A provider listed in PECOS with an active enrollment record is enrolled in Medicare. If Fonteum finds no PECOS record for an NPI, that means no Medicare enrollment was found for that number — not that the provider is barred or sanctioned. Sanctions are a separate signal: the OIG LEIE exclusion check on each profile is what flags a provider who has been excluded from federal programs. The two questions — “is this provider enrolled in Medicare?” and “is this provider excluded?” — are answered by different federal datasets, and the provider profile keeps them clearly separate.

Medicaid provider lookup

Medicaid is run state by state, so unlike Medicare there is no single national Medicaid enrollment file. Each state Medicaid agency maintains its own provider roster with its own enrollment rules and identifiers. An NPI can connect a state row to NPPES only when that state source actually publishes the NPI.

The practical workflow is to resolve the NPI here first — confirming name, specialty, and location from the federal NPPES record — and then carry that NPI to the specific state Medicaid portal to read enrollment status for that state. One cross-reference does carry across both programs: the OIG LEIE exclusion list applies to Medicare and Medicaid alike, so a provider flagged as excluded on a Fonteum profile is excluded from billing either program. For the public list of facilities and individuals under federal program sanction, see the Fonteum sanctions hub.

How it works

1. Enter a 10-digit NPI number for an exact match, or a provider or organization name (minimum 2 characters).
2. Fonteum queries the CMS NPPES NPI Registry public API at request time, without an intermediary provider-record cache. Results reflect what that API returned.
3. A result can include provider name, NPI, entity type, primary specialty and taxonomy code, practice address, enumeration date, and last-updated date from NPPES; fields can be null.
4. Where available, Fonteum overlays the CMS MIPS quality score (QPP PY2023) from our local federal dataset enrichment layer.
5. The response carries one NPPES source envelope with source name, authority, URL, and request-time fetch timestamp.

Frequently asked questions

Methodology & data freshness

The NPI and name search on this page is a live query. When you submit, Fonteum calls the CMS NPPES NPI Registry public API in real time and returns whatever the federal database holds at that moment — there is no intermediary copy, no nightly snapshot, and no stale cache standing between you and the registry. That is why the enumeration date and the last-updated date shown on each result come straight from NPPES: they describe when the provider created and last edited their own record, not when Fonteum fetched it.

Separately loaded provider-profile blocks do not share the lookup's live NPPES request time. In the July 12 production audit, the PECOS serving table had a June 18, 2026 newest source date and OIG LEIE had a May 8, 2026 source date. A MIPS block identifies its performance year when present. Source and date fields vary by block and can be unavailable; publisher cadence is not evidence that Fonteum completed a later load.

Fonteum does not edit, score, or re-rank the underlying federal data. The MIPS overlay is the clinician’s own published score; the exclusion flag is a direct match against the LEIE; the enrollment status is the PECOS value as released. The full join logic and refresh schedule are documented on the methodology page.

Privacy & ethical use

NPI records are public by law. The registry contains administrative provider data — name, specialty, registered business address, and identifiers — and deliberately excludes any patient information. Searching an NPI exposes nothing about the people a provider has cared for; it is administrative information submitted through the NPPES enumeration process.

Public does not mean consequence-free. The registered address on an NPI is frequently a home address for solo and small-practice clinicians, so the responsible use of this data is to inspect the enumerated name, taxonomy, address, and related program records — not to surveil, harass, or build contact lists for unsolicited marketing. Fonteum presents the registry as a transparency tool for patients, researchers, and other providers confirming who they are dealing with. It does not sell provider contact lists, and it asks that anyone citing this data link back rather than scrape it.

Related Fonteum research

The same federal provider graph that powers this lookup also drives Fonteum’s healthcare research. If you are tracing facility quality or program-integrity questions from a provider record, these studies start where the NPI ends:

• Nursing homes banned from Medicare admissions — facilities under a denial of payment for new admissions, drawn from CMS enforcement data.
• Nursing-home staffing deserts by county — county-level analysis of where nurse staffing falls furthest below federal benchmarks, from PBJ daily staffing data.
• Provider directory — browse source-provenanced profiles by specialty and state, and read the full record behind any NPI.
• Providers by specialty — national supply and per-state distribution for each tracked specialty, every figure traced to CMS NPPES.
• Providers by state — provider counts, Medicare-certified facilities, shortage areas, and exclusions for every U.S. state.

Source & limitations

Data source: CMS NPPES National Plan and Provider Enumeration System, operated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Public domain (US-Government-Works). Fonteum queries the NPPES public API in real-time; no data is cached on Fonteum servers.

Limitations:NPPES records reflect provider self-attestation and are not independently audited by CMS for accuracy of specialty, address, or status. Deactivated NPIs may still appear in search results. Address data reflects the provider’s registered practice location, which may differ from current practice. MIPS scores are available only for individual clinicians who participated in the QPP PY2023 program.

Free to cite with attribution to Fonteum Research and a link to this tool.