Texas nurse practitioner statistics (2026)
Texas has 40,840 nurse practitioners in the June 2026 file of the federal NPPES registry. Physician assistants add 14,506 more, for 55,346 providers combined across 865 Texas cities.
Headline counts
| Nurse practitioners (NP) | 40,840 |
|---|---|
| Physician assistants (PA) | 14,506 |
| NPs and PAs combined | 55,346 |
| Texas cities covered | 865 |
| NPPES data file | June 2026 |
Growth: NPs added to the registry per year
Of the 40,840 nurse practitioners now listed in Texas, 2,414 entered the NPI registry in 2025, and 943 more entered between January and June 2026.
| Year | New NPs | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2,104 | 17,786 |
| 2018 | 2,875 | 20,661 |
| 2019 | 3,131 | 23,792 |
| 2020 | 2,942 | 26,734 |
| 2021 | 3,054 | 29,788 |
| 2022 | 2,692 | 32,480 |
| 2023 | 2,680 | 35,160 |
| 2024 | 2,323 | 37,483 |
| 2025 | 2,414 | 39,897 |
| 2026 | 943 | 40,840 |
Counts are nurse practitioners currently listed in Texas, grouped by the year their NPI was first assigned (the NPPES enumeration date). This measures registry entries, not licensure. 2026 covers January through June only.
Top 15 cities by NP count
Houston has 5,886 nurse practitioners, 14.4% of the state total and the largest concentration in Texas.
| Rank | City | NPs | Share of state |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Houston | 5,886 | 14.4% |
| 2 | Dallas | 3,416 | 8.4% |
| 3 | San Antonio | 2,837 | 6.9% |
| 4 | Austin | 1,984 | 4.9% |
| 5 | Fort Worth | 1,705 | 4.2% |
| 6 | El Paso | 1,211 | 3.0% |
| 7 | Plano | 651 | 1.6% |
| 8 | Lubbock | 650 | 1.6% |
| 9 | Corpus Christi | 610 | 1.5% |
| 10 | Tyler | 477 | 1.2% |
| 11 | Arlington | 474 | 1.2% |
| 12 | Sugar Land | 449 | 1.1% |
| 13 | Amarillo | 447 | 1.1% |
| 14 | Katy | 442 | 1.1% |
| 15 | Temple | 385 | 0.9% |
Cities reflect each provider's primary practice address in NPPES.
Specialty mix: top 10 primary specialties
Family Nurse Practitioner is the most common primary specialty among Texas nurse practitioners: 21,146 of 40,840 NPs, or 51.8%.
| Specialty | NPs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Family Nurse Practitioner | 21,146 | 51.8% |
| Nurse Practitioner | 4,889 | 12.0% |
| Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner | 4,132 | 10.1% |
| Acute Care Nurse Practitioner | 3,213 | 7.9% |
| Pediatric Nurse Practitioner | 2,218 | 5.4% |
| Adult Health Nurse Practitioner | 1,164 | 2.9% |
| Women's Health Nurse Practitioner | 982 | 2.4% |
| Gerontology Nurse Practitioner | 956 | 2.3% |
| Primary Care Nurse Practitioner | 818 | 2.0% |
| Neonatal Nurse Practitioner | 634 | 1.6% |
Primary NPPES taxonomy only, so each provider is counted exactly once.
Where NPs concentrate
- 811 Texas cities have at least one nurse practitioner in the June 2026 file.
- 429 of those cities have 5 or fewer NPs, 279 have between 6 and 50, and 103 have 51 or more.
- The single largest concentration is Houston, with 5,886 nurse practitioners.
Method and citation
Source: the NPPES Data Dissemination file for June 2026, published monthly by the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We count individual providers (NPI Type 1) whose primary practice address is in Texas and whose NPPES taxonomy identifies them as a nurse practitioner. Every figure on this page is a deterministic count over that file; nothing is estimated or modeled. The pipeline is described on our methodology page.
Cite this page as:
NPI Atlas. “Texas Nurse Practitioner Statistics (2026).” NPPES June 2026 file. https://npiatlas.com/stats/texas-nurse-practitioners