The Residencies and, if applicable, Fellowship(s) you pursue will define your practice specialty. Although increasingly rare, there may physicians who have not completed a defined residency (such as those with one year post graduate training). This specialty has been termed as General Practice.

The list of specialties, and subspecialties below the parent, are listed in a Taxonomy table. When you apply for a NPI number, you are asked for your provider type (physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, etc.) and to select your specialties. Each primary specialty has a specific Taxonomy number. Subspecialties, related to the primary specialty, are nested with numbers that hold similar prefixes to the primary specialty, but suffixes that are differentiated.

When in practice, certain specialties are classified as either primary care or specialist. In some instances, a provider can maintain both designations for their specialty (with requested permission). The designation may be important for approval and types of payments from insurance companies, for privileges to practice at certain facilities, and for other practice type restrictions.

To save your specialty information, register, log in and go to the Practice Preparations section behind our secure firewall.