Where the Data Comes From

Every row starts in the CMS Doctors and Clinicians file dated Aug 18, 2026: 3,388,628 rows across 101 primary specialties, cut to 1,190,183 clinicians in our 36 files, one row per NPI. We add the practice website and, after you order, an email address that passes an SMTP check where we find one; in our first test run, on Sep 10, 2026, 55 of 400 cardiologists got one.

The CMS file

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services publish the Doctors and Clinicians national downloadable file. It lists clinicians enrolled in Medicare with their NPI, primary specialty, medical school, graduation year, credential, and the practice or hospital addresses where they see patients. It is a public federal dataset, free to download, with no license and no login.

The file we ship from is dated Aug 18, 2026. CMS republishes roughly every month and we rebuild on the same cycle.

Can I get this data free?

Yes, without the emails. CMS publishes the Doctors and Clinicians file free: the release dated Aug 18, 2026 has 3,388,628 rows, one per clinician, enrollment, group and address, across 101 primary specialties. The NPPES download covers every NPI in the country. Neither file has marketing email addresses; NPPES lists Direct secure-messaging addresses for some clinicians. What a $295 file saves you is the filtering to one specialty, the collapse to one row per NPI and the email column.

What we add

We collapse the file to one row per NPI, so a physician listed at eight locations becomes one row at their primary practice.
We resolve the practice domain from the practice name and address, then look for the physician's work address at that domain.
Every address goes through an SMTP check before it ships, and only addresses that pass go in the file. No specialty file has its email column built yet: each is built when it is first ordered, and the check date prints on the specialty page once it is.
We add the practice website when we find it.

Counts are computed, never typed

Every count from the CMS file is computed at build time and stored with the date it was computed; shares and per-row prices are rounded for display. Numbers from other sources, such as the AAMC's physician counts and other sellers' prices, carry their source and the date we read them. A missing count means we don't have it yet.

How to check an NPI

Take any NPI from a preview table on a specialty page and enter it at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov. You will see the same NPI and name. The credential and address can differ, because the registry and the CMS file are updated separately. NPPES is the federal source of record for the NPI itself.

What we never do

No patient data. Nothing in these files describes a patient or a treatment.
No scraping of medical records, portals, or anything behind a login. The source is a public download and the web pages of the practices themselves.
No invented counts, no fabricated rows, no filler emails. An unverified address does not ship.
No personal home addresses or personal phone numbers. Practice contact details only.

Is it legal to buy a physician email list and email doctors?

In the US, CAN-SPAM sets rules for every commercial email you send and has no rule against buying a list. The FTC's compliance guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email, and lists what each message must do: accurate header information, a subject line that matches the message, a clear notice that it is an ad, your valid physical postal address, a working way to opt out, and opt-outs honored within 10 business days. Prior consent is not on that list. Once someone opts out, you can't sell or transfer their address, “even in the form of a mailing list”. The guide puts penalties at up to $53,088 for each email that breaks the law (read Oct 7, 2026).

The files hold no patient data, so they carry no protected health information. Outside the US, other laws apply, such as Canada's CASL and the EU's GDPR; check them before you send. You are the sender, so compliance is yours.

Opt out

A physician who does not want to be in future files can ask to be removed. We honor it within five business days and it applies to every list we build after that.