How to Verify a Dental License in Florida Before You Hire
Run the Florida Board of Dentistry's checks through the Department of Health's MQA Search Portal — and verify each permit and assistant credential on its own.
In Florida, you verify a dentist's or hygienist's license through the Florida Board of Dentistry's online verification, which runs on the Florida Department of Health's MQA Search Portal — and you check sedation and anesthesia permits as credentials of their own.
Dental assistants are the exception: the Board does not license them, so what you verify instead is their training.
Here is how to run each check, and what to save.
Rules vary by state and change
This guide explains federal rules and the state rules it names, as of the date above.
Employment law and dental-practice rules differ by state and are revised often, so confirm current requirements with your state dental board, labor agency or employment counsel before you act on them.
It is general information, not legal advice.
Who licenses dental professionals in Florida
The Florida Board of Dentistry, part of the Florida Department of Health, licenses dentists and dental hygienists.
Its Verify a License link points to the Department of Health's MQA Search Portal — the Division of Medical Quality Assurance's online service portal — so one portal is the front door for the license check.
On its licensing page, the Board lists the credentials it issues: Dentist, Dental Hygienist and Dental Radiographer as professions, plus permits for General Anesthesia, Moderate Sedation, Pediatric Moderate Sedation and Local Anesthesia for Dental Hygienists.
Treat each one as its own record to verify, matched to the duties in the job description.
How a candidate earns those credentials is the candidate's side — dentist licensure requirements in Florida is our guide to that.
This page is yours: running the check before the hire.
Looking up a dentist's license
The MQA portal's License Verification tool searches the database by licensee name or license number; the portal also offers practitioner profiles and public records requests.
Start with the candidate's full name; if the results are ambiguous, re-run the search with the license number on their application.
One caveat from our research: the portal itself would not open on the day we checked — it returned an error — so we cannot describe the result screen for you.
Run the search yourself before you rely on it, and save what it shows rather than what a CV claims.
If the associate will sedate, the permit is a separate credential — the Board lists its General Anesthesia, Moderate Sedation and Pediatric Moderate Sedation permits alongside its professions.
Don't treat the dentist license as the permit answer: if the portal doesn't surface the permit, ask for it and confirm with the Board before the first sedation case.
The national process — which records to pull, in what order, for every role — is in our guide to how to verify a dental license.
Hygienist licenses and permits
Hygienists verify in the same place: the Board licenses dental hygienists, and the MQA portal's search covers them by name or license number like any other licensee.
The permit to look for is Local Anesthesia for Dental Hygienists — one of the permits on the Board's licensing page.
If your hygienists administer local anesthetic, verify that permit for the person you are hiring rather than assuming the hygiene license covers it.
If you cannot confirm it in the portal search, ask the candidate for the permit and check with the Board.
What Florida requires to become a hygienist, and which duties the license covers once verified, is on our dental hygienist requirements in Florida page.
Dental assistant registrations, certificates and permits
Start with the surprise: the Florida Board of Dentistry does not issue licenses to dental assistants.
There is no assistant license to look up in the portal, so a candidate who describes themselves as a "licensed" Florida assistant is describing training, not a state license.
What Florida has instead is duty-specific training.
Under board rule, dental assistants with formal training may position and expose dental radiographs under a Florida dentist's indirect supervision (Rule 64B5-16.005(2)(i)), and formal training can be certification as a dental radiographer under Rule 64B5-9.011.
That certification takes at least 3 months of continuous on-the-job training in positioning and exposing dental radiographic film under a Florida-licensed dentist's direct supervision, plus a Board-approved course; the Board listed a $35 application fee when we checked (October 2026).
Expanded-duty training follows the same logic: a course or program — from a CODA-accredited school or a Board-approved provider — not a state license.
Ask for the course record and keep it in the file.
One national credential you can check online: DANB certification (such as the CDA) is confirmed on DANB's own Verify Credentials tool.
That confirms a national certification — not a Florida authorization to practice — but it is independent evidence that a DANB credential on the résumé is real.
The full duty list for Florida assistants, and the routes into assisting, is on our dental assistant requirements in Florida page.
Discipline history and other states
Run discipline as its own search: the MQA portal has a separate Search Discipline tool, apart from the license search.
Search each candidate's name and save any action you find.
Board discipline also has a federal shadow: when a state dental board acts on a dentist's professional competence or conduct — revoking, suspending or restricting a license, censuring, reprimanding, placing the dentist on probation, or accepting a license surrender — it must report the action to the National Practitioner Data Bank (45 CFR 60.8), whose regulations count a state Board of Dentistry among its reporters (45 CFR 60.3).
Whether your practice can query the NPDB directly is its own question; our guide to NPDB queries covers direct queries and the candidate's self-query.
And for a candidate who has practiced outside Florida: Florida's portal verifies Florida credentials.
Licenses are issued and verified state by state — our research found no national dental license lookup — so run the other state's board lookup the same way.
Documenting the check
A verification is only worth what you can prove.
For each credential, save the date you ran the search, the tool you used, the name and license number, and a screenshot or PDF of what the record showed.
Because the portal was down when we researched this page: the record you save the day you run it is the evidence — not a CV or a screenshot the candidate sends you.
Fold the license file into the rest of the screen — references, your other background checks, and the federal exclusion list where it applies; our guide to OIG exclusion checks covers when and how.
Contract terms get set around the same stage: if your associate is coming from another Florida practice, check what Florida allows before you draft — our guide to non-competes in Florida covers how the state treats them.
Before the first patient: the Florida check
- Run the MQA license search for each dentist and hygienist, and save what it shows with the date you ran it.
- Search the portal's separate discipline tool for each candidate's name, and save any action you find.
- For a dentist who will sedate, verify the General Anesthesia, Moderate Sedation or Pediatric Moderate Sedation permit as its own credential.
- For a hygienist who will administer local anesthetic, verify the Local Anesthesia for Dental Hygienists permit.
- For assistants, collect training records: dental radiographer certification (or equivalent formal training) and any expanded-duties course record.
- For a candidate licensed in another state, run that state's board lookup too.
- Ask each dentist finalist for an NPDB self-query result.
Questions employers ask
Does Florida license dental assistants?
No. The Florida Board of Dentistry states on its own site that it does not issue licenses to dental assistants, so there is no assistant license to look up on the state's verification portal.
What Florida has instead is duty-specific training: certification as a dental radiographer for x-ray work, and expanded-duties training delivered as a course or program.
Verify those records with the candidate and keep copies in the file.
How do I check a Florida dentist's discipline history?
Florida's MQA portal has a separate Search Discipline tool, apart from the license search — run the candidate's name through it and save what you find.
Board actions based on a dentist's professional competence or conduct are also reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank, and the candidate's NPDB self-query is a second record to ask for.
Our NPDB queries guide covers direct queries and the candidate's self-query.
Which permit covers a Florida hygienist giving local anesthetic?
The Board's licensing page lists Local Anesthesia for Dental Hygienists as one of its permits, alongside General Anesthesia, Moderate Sedation and Pediatric Moderate Sedation.
If the hygienist you are hiring will administer local anesthetic, verify that permit for them specifically rather than assuming the hygiene license covers it.
If you cannot confirm it in the portal search, ask the candidate for the permit and confirm with the Board.
What training should a Florida dental assistant have to take x-rays?
Under Florida board rule, an assistant with formal training may position and expose dental radiographs under a Florida dentist's indirect supervision.
Formal training can be certification as a dental radiographer, which requires at least 3 months of continuous on-the-job training under a Florida-licensed dentist's direct supervision plus a Board-approved course.
Ask for the certificate, or documentation of equivalent formal training, before the assistant's first x-ray.
Is the Florida license lookup current to the day?
We cannot tell you — the portal would not open on the day we researched this page, so we could not read its own statements about how often it updates or what it calls itself.
That is exactly why the habit that matters is running the search yourself before the hire and saving what it shows, with the date.
If the portal ever displays a last-updated note, record it with your screenshot.
Is there a national dental license lookup?
Not one we could source.
Licenses are issued and verified state by state, so a Florida hire is checked on Florida's portal, and any out-of-state license on that state's own board lookup.
The National Practitioner Data Bank is not a license lookup — it is a reporting data bank that state dental boards report certain discipline to.
Sources
- Florida Board of Dentistry — website (Verify a License) (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- Florida Department of Health — MQA Services (License Verification, Search Discipline) (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- Florida Board of Dentistry — Licensing (professions and permits) (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- Florida Board of Dentistry — Dental Radiographer (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- DANB — Verify Credentials (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- eCFR — 45 CFR 60.8 (NPDB reporting by boards) (retrieved October 7, 2026)
- eCFR — 45 CFR 60.3 (NPDB definitions) (retrieved October 6, 2026)
More hiring resources
Hiring a dentist, hygienist or assistant in Florida?
Post the role on DentistryHires, then run the Florida checks above on every finalist before their first day.