Frequently Asked Questions

Use Find a doctor. Pick a specialty (suggestions appear as you type, and everyday words such as “heart doctor” work), add a doctor’s name if you know it, and a city, county, state or ZIP code. Then every clinician has their own page with practice address, phone, specialties, state licenses and Medicare data.

We list clinicians with an active National Provider Identifier (NPI) and a U.S. practice address. First, try only the last name, check the spelling, widen the place (a state instead of a ZIP), or switch to “All clinicians”: without a specialty, search shows physicians (MD and DO) first. Also, a doctor who recently moved may still show their old address until they update the NPI registry.

They are what each clinician reported to the federal NPI registry. However, nobody verifies these details, and they can lag behind moves. So call before visiting. Clinicians must update the registry within 30 days of a change (more about the NPI).

Each state’s medical board issues licenses, so the board’s online lookup is the official source. DocInfo.org, run by the Federation of State Medical Boards, searches every state board at once and shows public disciplinary actions. In contrast, the license numbers on our doctor pages are the ones the clinician reported to the NPI registry. They help you find the right record, but they don’t verify anything. For eight states that publish license files, our doctor pages also show the year the license was first issued; see which states publish license data.

Board certification means a doctor passed a specialty board’s exams and keeps up its requirements. For MDs and many DOs, use the American Board of Medical Specialties’ free lookup, Certification Matters. For DOs certified by osteopathic boards, check with the American Osteopathic Association instead. However, certification isn’t in public federal data, so our pages don’t show it.

For Medicare, doctor pages show whether a clinician accepts Medicare assignment, when Medicare’s Care Compare reports it. For private insurance and Medicaid plans, check your plan’s provider directory or call the office: networks change often and aren’t in public federal data.

Both are fully licensed physicians who can practice any specialty and prescribe. MDs graduate from allopathic medical schools; DOs from osteopathic schools, which add training in osteopathic manipulative treatment. Since 2020, MD and DO graduates train in the same residency programs under a single accreditation system (ACGME).

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are advanced practice nurses with graduate degrees; physician assistants (PAs) complete a master’s-level medical program. Both diagnose, treat and prescribe. How independently they can practice depends on the state. Our search shows physicians first; choose “All clinicians” to include NPs, PAs and others.

Clinicians can list several specialties in the NPI registry and mark one as primary. For example, many endocrinologists, cardiologists and other subspecialists mark internal medicine as primary. Search finds them under every specialty they list and shows the primary one too. Maps, however, count each clinician once, under the primary specialty (details).

A free, permanent 10-digit number that identifies a health care provider on insurance claims, prescriptions and referrals. It identifies who the provider is; it isn’t a license and says nothing about qualifications. Read the full guide: What Is an NPI Number?

No. It is the date the clinician registered for an NPI. CMS first issued NPIs in May 2005, and they became required on claims in 2007–2008, so about half of today’s physicians have a 2005–2007 date no matter when they started practicing. Instead, where a state publishes it, our doctor pages show the license’s first-issue year instead.

Yes. Type the name in Find a doctor; each doctor page shows the NPI. The official federal lookup is the CMS NPI Registry.

NPIs are public, and criminals sometimes use real ones for false claims. Report it to your insurer; for Medicare, call 1-800-MEDICARE.

Usually four years of college, four years of medical school, then three to seven years of residency depending on the specialty. That is about 11 to 15 years after high school. Subspecialists add a one- to three-year fellowship.

Residency is paid, supervised training in a specialty (such as internal medicine or surgery) right after medical school; finishing it makes a doctor eligible for board certification. A fellowship is optional further training in a subspecialty (such as cardiology after internal medicine).

The United States Medical Licensing Examination has three parts: Step 1 (basic science, pass/fail since January 2022), Step 2 CK (clinical knowledge) and Step 3 (taken during residency). DO students take the similar COMLEX exams. Passing them is required for a license. Scores are private, so no public source shows when or how a doctor passed.

From Medicare’s Care Compare, which covers clinicians enrolled in Medicare. Its school list holds U.S. schools only, and it lists everyone else as “Other”, so we show a school for about 60% of physicians in Care Compare and none for clinicians outside Medicare.

Not from free public data. About a quarter of U.S. physicians are international medical graduates (AAMC), but federal files don’t say which ones, and “Other” in Care Compare also covers some U.S. graduates. We don’t label anyone as an international graduate unless a reliable source says so.

The prescribing data comes from Medicare Part D, whose members are mostly 65 and older. Dividing by residents 65+ compares places fairly. However, the data leaves out prescriptions paid by private insurance or Medicaid (see the prescribing maps).

No. They cover traditional Medicare only: not Medicare Advantage (about half of Medicare members), Medicaid or private insurance. In addition, Medicare hides counts below 11 to protect patient privacy. As a result, a specialist who sees few older patients may show little or nothing.

From federal sources: the NPI registry (monthly), Medicare prescribing and service files (yearly), Care Compare (monthly), Open Payments (yearly) and the Census Bureau. The Methodology page lists each source, year and method.

Search finds clinicians under every specialty they list; maps count each clinician once under their primary specialty. Also, search counts up to 1,000 matches and then shows “more than 1,000”.

Drug and device makers must report payments and gifts to doctors and other clinicians (meals, travel, speaking and consulting fees, royalties and more) under the federal Sunshine Act. CMS publishes them each June in Open Payments. Since 2021, the reports have also covered nurse practitioners, physician assistants and some other clinicians. Explore them on our payments map, or see which clinicians received the most, by state, specialty, company or drug, in our payments by doctor list.

No. Many payments are for legitimate work such as research, consulting or teaching, or are small meals. In other words, the data shows financial relationships, not wrongdoing or how a doctor treats patients.

Yes. Before each yearly release, clinicians can review the records about them and dispute errors with the reporting company. CMS then marks disputed records in its data.

Most employed doctors get a base salary, often plus a productivity bonus tied to how much work they do (measured in RVUs), and sometimes quality bonuses. In contrast, doctors in private practice earn from what the practice bills. Similarly, academic doctors often earn part of their pay for teaching and research. Medscape’s 2026 survey put average pay at $298,000 for primary care physicians and $417,000 for specialists. More in our guide to how doctors are paid.

A relative value unit is Medicare’s measure of how much work and cost a service involves. Each service has three parts: physician work, practice expense and malpractice cost. Medicare’s payment is the RVUs, adjusted for local costs, times a dollar “conversion factor” set every year in the Physician Fee Schedule. For 2026 the conversion factor is $33.40 ($33.57 in qualifying alternative payment models). Many employers pay productivity bonuses per work RVU (wRVU); see how that works.

Each hospital sets its residents’ salary, the same for everyone in the same year of training at that program, and rising each year. The AAMC’s 2025 survey found an average of $68,166 in the first year, $70,499 in the second and $73,301 in the third. Many programs publish their salaries on their websites.

Beyond base salary: how bonuses are calculated (wRVU targets and rate per wRVU), call duties and pay, clinic hours and patient load, support staff, signing and relocation bonuses, loan repayment, CME money and days off, malpractice coverage (including “tail” coverage after leaving), retirement match, non-compete terms and how the contract can be ended. Finally, have a lawyer who knows physician contracts review it. Our pay guide has a full checklist.