Your State Has a Dental Board — Here's How to Use It

Every U.S. state has a state dental board that regulates dental practice within that state. They issue licenses, set continuing education requirements, investigate patient complaints, and publish disciplinary actions when they suspend, revoke, or restrict a dentist's license.

Most patients have never used these resources. The records are public, the lookups are free, and they give you information that no commercial review site reliably captures.

What a state dental board does

State dental boards are administrative agencies created by state law. Their core powers:

• Issue and renew dental licenses for dentists, hygienists, and (in some states) dental therapists.
• Set continuing-education (CE) requirements for license renewal.
• Investigate complaints filed by patients, employers, or other dentists.
• Take disciplinary action — fines, probation, license suspension, license revocation, mandated treatment for substance use, mandated remedial CE.
• Publish disciplinary records — most states publish them, though the timeliness and search interface vary widely.

The American Association of Dental Boards (aadexam.org) maintains a directory of all state boards with current website URLs.

What the records tell you

When a dentist has been disciplined, the published record typically includes:

• The dentist's name and license number.
• The disciplinary action — suspension, revocation, probation, fine, etc.
• The basis for the action — e.g., "negligent treatment," "improper prescribing," "failure to maintain adequate records," "substance use while practicing," "billing fraud."
• The date the order was issued and (if probationary) the conditions and duration.

Boards typically publish a separate notice for each action. If a dentist was disciplined three times over their career, you'll see three records.

What the records don't tell you

A few important caveats:

• Most patient complaints don't result in published action. The board screens, investigates, and may close cases without any public record. A "clean" board record means no formal disciplinary action — it doesn't mean no complaints have ever been filed.
• Disciplinary records are state-bounded. A dentist who was disciplined in Texas, surrendered the license, and moved to Florida may not have the Texas record show up in Florida's database. Look up any state where they've practiced if you have reason to.
• Older records may be archived or removed. Many states have retention rules — actions older than 10 years may not appear in the current public search.
• The records are factual, not editorial. Reading them takes some context. A "fine for inadequate record-keeping" is meaningfully different from "license revoked for sexual misconduct."

How to look up a dentist on a state board

1. Identify the right state

The board you check is the one where the dentist is licensed and practicing. If they practice in multiple states, you may need to check each.

2. Find the board's licensee search

Go to AADB's State Dental Boards directory, find your state, and follow the link to the official site. Most boards have a "Verify a License" or "License Search" tool prominently on the home page.

3. Search by name or license number

The license number is more reliable than name, because:

• Names can be ambiguous (multiple dentists with similar names).
• Licenses are unique within a state.
• The NPPES record on npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov often includes the dentist's state license number under "Other Identifiers" — see our NPPES verification primer.

4. Read the record

Fields you'll typically see:

• License status — Active, Inactive, Suspended, Revoked, Surrendered.
• License issue date.
• Renewal date.
• Disciplinary actions — usually a separate tab or link.
• CE compliance status in some states.

If "Disciplinary actions" exists and shows entries, click through to read the order itself. The order will explain what happened, what the board found, and what action was taken.

When to actually do this

Not every dental visit warrants a state-board check. Reasonable cases:

• Major elective work — full-mouth reconstruction, implants, orthodontia. The financial stake justifies the 5 minutes of due diligence.
• Specialist referrals to providers you don't know. Especially surgical referrals.
• Anything that feels off — a hard sell for unnecessary work, pressure to commit on the day, refusal to provide a written treatment plan, claimed credentials that don't show up on NPPES — the state board check is one way to gather more signal.
• Switching dentists in a new city. Worth a quick lookup.

Companion check: the OIG exclusions database

Separately from state boards, the HHS OIG List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) is a federal database of providers who have been excluded from participation in all federal health-care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.).

Exclusion is the most serious federal sanction — it usually follows a felony conviction (often Medicaid fraud, patient harm, controlled- substance violations, or financial misconduct).

Search by name; exclusions are public. We filter excluded providers out of our public-tier results automatically — see our methodology — but the source-of-truth lookup is at oig.hhs.gov.

Filing a complaint

If you've experienced something that warrants a complaint:

1. Document it. Keep all paperwork, treatment plans, X-rays, receipts, and written communications.
2. Get a second opinion from another dentist when relevant. Their findings can support your complaint.
3. File with the state board where the practice is located. Most boards accept online complaints; some require notarized written complaints. The state board page on AADB will link to the complaint-filing instructions.
4. Be specific. "I felt overcharged" is harder to act on than "I was charged for D2750 (PFM crown) but the X-ray shows a composite filling D2392 was placed."
5. Wait. Investigations can take months. The board cannot typically share details of an active investigation with the complainant.

The board cannot order the dentist to refund you — that's a civil court matter. It can investigate licensure violations and impose disciplinary action.

What this site uses

Our editorial workflow uses three independent verification layers for every public-tier provider:

1. NPPES for identity, taxonomy, and active status.
2. OIG LEIE to filter out federally excluded providers from all public listings.
3. State dental boards for context when we receive specific complaint referrals on individual providers.

We don't aggregate state-board disciplinary records into a unified nationwide database — that's a substantial editorial commitment beyond our current scope, and the records are state-by-state for legal reasons. The state-board lookup is something we recommend patients do directly when the situation warrants.

Bottom line

State dental boards are a free, public, official check on the dentist treating you. Use them when the financial or clinical stakes warrant the 5 minutes. Pair the lookup with NPPES for credentials, the OIG exclusions list for federal sanctions, and (if applicable) CMS Open Payments for financial relationships with manufacturers. Together, those four sources give you a verifiable picture that no review site replicates.