What is an NPI number?
An NPI (National Provider Identifier) is a ten-digit ID issued by CMS for covered healthcare providers and organizations in the United States. It is the standard identifier on HIPAA transactions.
Products collect NPIs during onboarding, credentialing, and billing. Software should validate format locally, then confirm existence and status against the NPI Registry.
Registry records distinguish individuals (NPI-1) and organizations (NPI-2); your UI and data model should branch on entity type instead of treating every record like a person name.
Look up an NPI
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" "https://healthproviderapi.com/api/v1/npi/1003000126"Next steps