National Practitioner Data Bank Public Use File
Welcome to the download page for NPDB data.
NPDB Data is available in zipped files for download directly from the site, or by FTP.
If you have any technical problems or questions, please contact IRE/NICAR at datalib@ire.org or 573-882-2042 or 573-882-7711.
About the data
This file is an August, 2011, download from the National Practitioner Data Bank Public Use File. On Sept. 1 the federal government removed the data, which had been publicly available since 1990.
Investigative Reporters and Editors, along with the Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Professional Journalists, is protesting this removal of public information. IRE has also filed a FOIA request to receive the most recent version of this data set.
IRE/NICAR processed this data set from August and is making it publicly available online to anyone.
Please read all files pertaining to the data set before using it. In particular the Readme1101-DAT.pdf provides information for this data set in terms of record layout and definitions of terms.
Downloading the data
To access the entire file that IRE/NICAR obtained download the US.zip file. Data pertaining to particular states was sliced out and is available in the zip file relating to the two-digit state abbreviation.
State — Record Count
AK — 2,474
AL — 15,350
AR — 10,553
AZ — 30,327
CA — 78,115
CO — 17,802
CT — 9,857
DC — 2,752
DE — 2,027
FL — 52,926
GA — 16,011
HI — 1,850
IA — 9,562
ID — 2,710
IL — 32,890
IN — 14,009
KS — 9,140
KY — 14,147
LA — 21,872
MA — 17,459
MD — 14,979
ME — 4,283
MI — 32,623
MN — 12,348
MO — 17,863
MS — 14,233
MT — 3,536
NC — 19,526
ND — 2,637
NE — 5,791
NH — 4,361
NJ — 29,389
NM — 6,404
NV — 8,472
NY — 67,238
OH — 32,623
OK — 19,010
OR — 12,199
PA — 46,519
PR — 4,186
RI — 3,601
SC — 10,276
SD — 2,081
TN — 13,545
TX — 72,963
UT — 7,204
VA — 24,119
VT — 3,154
WA — 23,459
WI — 10,097
WV — 8,323
WY — 1,928
Download an individual state's .xls file here.
Documentation for the data
The following documents are for use with any of the data sets.
- Read Me file (.txt)
- Terms and conditions (.txt)
- Readme1101-DAT (PDF) Readme file provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, includes much of the information found within this file and the layout with some additional contact and background information.
- Factsheet (PDF) Provides background and information for the National Practitioner Databank
- Regulations (PDF) Definitions and laws provided by the Department of Health and Human Services.
- Guidebook (PDF) Compliance requirements for NPDB.
Download the data
FTP is the best and easiest way to download the raw NPDB data.
To start, open ftp://npdb@ftp.nicar.org within Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) or open ftp.nicar.org with better FTP software like FileZilla or Cyberduck. The user is "npdb" and the password is currently "freedata".