The National Provider Identifier (NPI) is a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Administrative Simplification Standard. The NPI is a unique identification number for covered health care providers. Covered health care providers and all health plans and health care clearinghouses must use the NPIs in the administrative and financial transactions adopted under HIPAA. The NPI is a 10-position, intelligence-free numeric identifier (10-digit number). This means that the numbers do not carry other information about healthcare providers, such as the state in which they live or their medical specialty. The NPI must be used in lieu of legacy provider identifiers in the HIPAA standards transactions.

As outlined in the Federal Regulation, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), covered providers must also share their NPI with other providers, health plans, clearinghouses, and any entity that may need it for billing purposes.

You can download the NPPES Data Dissemination file (also referred to as the NPPES Downloadable File) as a ZIP file. This is a large file containing NPI data in CSV format. Do not try to open the CSV file (4 GB or bigger) with Excel as it will likely crash the software.

Download from: http://nppes.viva-it.com/NPI_Files.html

The NPI dataset is large and requires special processing methods. Some tools for working with the dataset are noted at:

• https://github.com/hhsidealab/provider-data-tools (tools for working with NPPES dataset)

Further information on the NPI Standard is available at:

• https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Administrative-Simplification/NationalProvIdentStand/