⚕️ Doctor Directory Lead Finder — NPI + Healthgrades

Pull qualified US healthcare-provider leads — name, NPI, specialty, practice address, phone, and (where available) email — by specialty and state. Built for medical-device sales, pharma reps, EHR/PMS SaaS prospecting, healthcare-marketing agencies, and telehealth recruiting teams who refuse to pay $30K/year for Definitive Healthcare.

NPI Registry is the federal canonical spine (100% US coverage, zero cost, public-record data). We layer optional Healthgrades-style enrichment for accepting-new-patients status, ratings, and contact details — honestly disclosed at a ~30–35% email find rate.

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HIPAA-Safety Statement — read this first

This actor touches zero patient data. It exclusively uses:

1. NPI Registry — federal public registry published by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Administrative Simplification rules. Every U.S. healthcare provider who bills any insurer is listed here. The data is explicitly designated as public and downloadable in bulk from cms.hhs.gov. We hit the public JSON API.
2. Healthgrades / Vitals / Doctoralia (optional, only when enrichContact=true) — consumer-facing provider directories. We read only the same fields a patient searching for a doctor would see in a browser: practice name, address, phone, rating, "accepting new patients" badge.

We never collect, request, store, or transmit Protected Health Information (PHI). No diagnoses, no treatments, no patient encounters, no insurance records, no anything that would trigger a HIPAA covered-entity obligation. Buyers in regulated industries can use this output for top-of-funnel B2B prospecting without HIPAA exposure, the same way they would use a LinkedIn export of physician profiles.

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Use cases

• Medical device sales — build a list of orthopedic surgeons in California for a knee-implant launch.
• Pharma rep targeting — segment endocrinologists by state for a new GLP-1 detail.
• EHR / PMS SaaS prospecting — pull every solo-proprietor family-medicine practice in Texas (sole-proprietor flag is in NPI itself).
• Telehealth recruiting — find psychiatrists in 5 states for a multi-state telehealth panel.
• Healthcare-marketing agencies — build segmented email lists by specialty + city for cold outreach campaigns.
• M&A diligence — count cardiology practices in a target MSA before underwriting a roll-up.
• Clinical-research outreach — recruit principal investigators by therapy area + region.

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How it works

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  YOU: specialty + state     │
└─────────────┬───────────────┘
              │
              v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Step 1 — NPI Registry API          │   ← 100% US, zero cost, public
│  taxonomy_description + state filter│
│  Returns: name, NPI, address, taxonomy
└─────────────┬───────────────────────┘
              │   provider-returned event ($0.03)
              v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Step 2 — Optional enrichment       │   ← only when enrichContact=true
│  Healthgrades search (Playwright)   │
│  Reads: rating, accepting status,   │
│         occasional contact email    │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────┘
              │   contact-enriched ($0.05)
              │   email-found      ($0.10)  ← only if found
              v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Dataset: one row per provider      │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

Honest find rates — we have no incentive to overpromise. Across recent test runs:

Field	Find rate
Name / NPI / address	100% (NPI is canonical)
Practice phone	~95% (in NPI; ~98% with directory enrichment)
Specialty / sub-specialty	100% (NUCC taxonomy)
Accepting new patients	~60% (when directory match exists)
Provider rating	~55% (Healthgrades-dependent)
Email	~30–35% (practice site contact-page scrapes)

If a directory blocks the request, the actor still returns the provider's NPI record — it never crashes on enrichment failure. You pay for provider-returned either way; contact-enriched only fires when enrichment actually produced data.

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Supported specialties (50+)

Specialty input is case-insensitive and mapped to NUCC Health Care Provider Taxonomy codes (24.0). Unmapped strings fall through to NPI Registry's free-text taxonomy filter.

Physicians (allopathic + osteopathic): Anesthesiology, Cardiology, Cardiovascular Disease, Dermatology, Diagnostic Radiology, Emergency Medicine, Endocrinology, Family Medicine, Gastroenterology, General Surgery, Geriatrics, Hematology, Hospitalist, Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, Interventional Radiology, Medical Oncology, Nephrology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Ob-Gyn, Oncology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedic Surgery, Otolaryngology (ENT), Pain Medicine, Pathology, Pediatrics, Physical Medicine, Plastic Surgery, Psychiatry, Pulmonology, Radiology, Rheumatology, Sleep Medicine, Thoracic Surgery, Urology, Vascular Surgery.

Dentistry: Dentistry, Orthodontics, Endodontics, Periodontics, Oral Surgery.

Mental / behavioural health: Psychology, Clinical Social Work.

Mid-level providers: Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistant, Midwife.

Other: Chiropractic, Optometry, Podiatry, Pharmacy.

For specialties or sub-specialties not in this list, type the NUCC classification name verbatim (e.g. "Pediatric Cardiology") and the actor will pass it through to the NPI Registry taxonomy filter.

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Output schema (one object per provider)

Field	Type	Example
npi	string	"1234567890" (10-digit federal ID)
enumerationType	string	"NPI-1" (individual) or "NPI-2" (org)
firstName	string	"Sarah"
lastName	string	"Chen"
middleName	string?	"J"
credentials	string?	"MD", "DO", "DDS", "NP", "PA-C"
organizationName	string?	only on NPI-2 records
gender	string?	"M", "F"
specialty	string	"Cardiovascular Disease"
primaryTaxonomyCode	string	"207RC0000X"
licenseNumber	string?	"A123456"
licenseState	string?	"CA"
subSpecialties	string[]	["Interventional Cardiology"]
soleProprietor	bool	true = solo practice (different sales motion)
practiceAddress	object	{street, city, state, zip, phone, fax}
mailingAddress	object	same shape
enumerationDate	string	"2008-04-12" — proxy for years in practice
lastUpdated	string	"2024-11-03"
status	string	"A" = active
npiRegistryUrl	string	direct link to public NPI profile
practiceWebsite	string?	enrichment only
practicePhone	string	preferred over NPI's listed phone
email	string?	~30–35% find rate (enrichment only)
acceptingNewPatients	bool?	from directory
rating	number?	0–5 from Healthgrades
yearsOfExperience	int?	from directory bio
enrichmentSource	string?	"healthgrades" when enrichment hit
source	string	"npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov"

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JSON examples

Cardiologists in California, 50 providers, no enrichment:

{
  "specialty": "cardiology",
  "state": "CA",
  "maxProviders": 50,
  "enrichContact": false
}

Pediatricians in Austin, TX accepting new patients, with enrichment:

{
  "specialty": "pediatrics",
  "state": "TX",
  "city": "Austin",
  "maxProviders": 100,
  "enrichContact": true,
  "acceptingNewPatients": true
}

Dental group practices (organizations) in Florida:

{
  "specialty": "dentistry",
  "state": "FL",
  "npiType": "Organization",
  "maxProviders": 200,
  "enrichContact": false
}

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Run it from Python (Apify SDK)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/doctor-directory-lead-finder").call(run_input={
    "specialty": "orthopedic surgery",
    "state": "NY",
    "maxProviders": 250,
    "enrichContact": True,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["npi"], item["firstName"], item["lastName"], item.get("email"))

Run it from cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~doctor-directory-lead-finder/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"specialty":"dermatology","state":"IL","maxProviders":25,"enrichContact":true}'

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FAQ

1. How fresh is NPI Registry data? CMS updates the public NPI Registry weekly. lastUpdated on each record shows the most recent provider self-attestation. NPI numbers themselves never change once issued.

2. Why are you honest about a 30–35% email find rate? Because the alternative is lying. Most directory sources don't publish a clean email — we extract from practice contact pages when discoverable. Vendors who promise "95% email coverage" are either selling stale appended data or guessing patterns like firstname.lastname@gmail.com — both of which will get your domain blocklisted within a week.

3. Is this HIPAA-compliant? The actor returns only publicly-listed provider information — no PHI ever touches it. NPI Registry is a federal public record. Healthgrades shows what any patient searching for a doctor would see. Using this output for B2B prospecting is the same regulatory category as buying a LinkedIn list — fully fine.

4. Can I bulk-query an entire state? Yes. maxProviders caps at 1000 per run. For multi-state or full-specialty pulls, run the actor multiple times — the NPI Registry rate limit is generous (we throttle to ~4 req/sec to be a good citizen).

5. Do you cover NPs, PAs, DOs, dentists? Yes — anyone with an NPI. NPs, PAs, midwives, psychologists, chiropractors, optometrists, podiatrists, pharmacists are all supported.

6. What about international providers? US only — NPI Registry is by definition a U.S. federal system. For Canada, UK, Australia, Germany providers, use country-specific medical-council registries (Linear request: tell us which countries you need and we'll spin up sister actors).

7. What's the refund policy when directory enrichment blocks? We charge contact-enriched ($0.05) only when enrichment actually produced data. If Healthgrades returns nothing for a provider, you pay only the base $0.03 provider-returned fee. No charge fired for nothing returned.

8. How does this compare to buying a list from ZoomInfo / Definitive Healthcare? See the comparison table below. Short answer: 1/100th the cost, equivalent NPI-level accuracy, honestly lower email coverage. For 80% of medtech / pharma / SaaS use cases, that trade-off is worth it.

9. Can I filter to providers who opened a new practice recently? Yes — sort the dataset by enumerationDate descending. Providers with recent NPI enumeration dates are likely newer practitioners or have just changed practice settings, both strong buying signals.

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How we stack up

Feature	This actor	Doximity	Definitive Healthcare	IQVIA Onekey	NPI Registry direct	Healthgrades
Cost	$0.03–$0.18/provider	$300+/mo seat	$30K+/yr enterprise	enterprise license	free	consumer site
US coverage	100% (all NPI)	~80% physicians	100%	100%	100%	partial
NUCC specialty taxonomy	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Email enrichment	~30–35% honest	~70% (paid)	60–80%	80%+	none	none
Bulk export	yes (any size)	per-seat limits	yes	yes	bulk file only	no
HIPAA-safe scope	yes — public only	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
API access	yes	limited	yes	yes	yes (no enrichment)	no
Update frequency	weekly (NPI)	quarterly	quarterly	monthly	weekly	rolling
Time to first lead	5 seconds	sales cycle	sales cycle	sales cycle	DIY weeks	manual

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Sister actors (NexGenData fleet)

Build full B2B lead-gen workflows:

• nexgendata/b2b-leads-finder — multi-source B2B prospecting beyond healthcare.
• nexgendata/company-data-aggregator — enrich practice records with firmographics (employees, revenue, NAICS).
• nexgendata/lead-list-enricher — append phone, email, LinkedIn to an existing CSV.
• nexgendata/email-validator — SMTP-validate enriched emails before sending to keep your sender reputation clean.
• nexgendata/court-records-search — cross-reference providers against federal/state court records for medical-malpractice diligence.

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Don't have an Apify account?

Sign up free — $5 free credits, no card required. That's enough to pull ~150 enriched providers and validate the data quality before you commit to a paid plan.

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Built by NexGenData. Questions, custom specialties, or international coverage requests: open an issue on the actor's GitHub or reach scrapers@thenextgennexus.com.