How to Verify a Dental License in Illinois Before You Hire

Dental licenses in Illinois are issued by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), which also operates the License Lookup you will use for verification.

If you went looking for an Illinois dental board's lookup tool, IDFPR is the agency whose records answer the question.

IDFPR's dental professions page lists the credentials it holds records for: Dentist (Licensed), Dental Hygienist (Registered), Specialty in Dentistry, Dentist (Temporary), Restricted Faculty License, Temporary Dental Teacher License, Dental Sedation Permit and Dentist Controlled Substance license.

This page is the Illinois part of our guide to how to verify a dental license.

How someone earns an Illinois license is a separate question, owned by our guide to dentist licensure requirements in Illinois; this page is about confirming the license or permit a candidate actually holds.

IDFPR directs primary-source verification to its License Lookup tools — for professional licensing, the Professional Regulation License Look Up, which IDFPR says has been approved for use as a primary source for verification by The Joint Commission, the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the American Osteopathic Association's Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program.

Run the search yourself rather than accepting a screenshot the candidate supplied, and save a dated copy of whatever the record returns; we could not confirm which fields a result shows, so keep the copy you capture.

IDFPR also says the Single License Lookup's data is updated daily and a new license may take up to 24 hours to appear — so if a recently licensed candidate returns nothing, wait a day and search again.

Match the credential type to the job: a Restricted Faculty License or Temporary Dental Teacher License is a different record from the full Dentist (Licensed) credential, so check the type before you rely on it.

Two more credentials sit alongside the license.

Illinois issues two dental sedation permits: Permit A for moderate (conscious) sedation and Permit B for deep sedation or general anesthesia — so if your associate will cover sedation cases, verify the permit separately rather than assuming the license carries it.

Illinois also requires anyone who dispenses controlled substances to hold an IDFPR controlled substance registration (720 ILCS 570/302), separate for each practice location where controlled substances are located or stored; locations that only prescribe do not need one per site.

Hygienists verify through the same IDFPR records: Dental Hygienist (Registered) is one of the professions IDFPR licenses, and the License Lookup is the tool IDFPR points primary-source verifiers to.

Timing carries over too: IDFPR reports daily updates, with up to 24 hours for a new license to appear.

Treat any claimed authorization beyond the license as its own verification: if a hygienist candidate says they hold a permit for a particular duty, ask which credential documents it and verify that record before scheduling around it.

What a verified hygienist may do chairside, and what each duty requires, is scope detail our guide to dental hygienist requirements in Illinois keeps current.

Confirm the credential here; confirm the duties you schedule there.

Start with the structural fact: Illinois does not register dental assistants, so there is no assistant license to look up.

Under the state's dental practice rules, a dental assistant is an "appropriately trained" person working under a dentist's supervision, qualified by formal training or on-the-job training judged competent by the supervising dentist; IDFPR's list of dental professions does not include assistants.

A resume line claiming an "Illinois dental assistant license" is worth a polite question.

Verification for this role means checking the certificates the person actually holds.

A national credential such as DANB's CDA can be confirmed on DANB's own Verify Credentials tool — which confirms DANB credentials only, not an Illinois authorization to perform any specific duty.

Radiography is the open question: which Illinois agency regulates dental x-ray operators was not confirmed when this page was researched, and the dental rules' dental-assistant section does not address it — so confirm any x-ray credential a candidate claims directly with IDFPR before you rely on it.

Because on-the-job competency is judged by the supervising dentist, keep the training records and competency sign-offs in the employee's file.

The fuller picture of the role is on our guide to dental assistant requirements in Illinois.

Don't stop at the lookup for discipline: IDFPR says disciplinary documents are not in the lookup and are requested through a FOIA request.

What you can check online is IDFPR's Consolidated Reports, which publish disciplinary actions against licensees including the dates of discipline and a brief synopsis — run that alongside the lookup before you rely on a clean result.

For a paper record, IDFPR sells a certified copy (a Certification of Licensure) for $20 for most IDFPR professions, requested through the licensee's account or a paper application — and online certifications are not available for licenses that have discipline, which is itself worth noting when you collect one.

Discipline also follows the dentist across state lines: state dental boards must report to the National Practitioner Data Bank any action based on professional competence or conduct that revokes, suspends or restricts a dentist's license, censures, reprimands or places the dentist on probation, or accepts a license surrender — and the NPDB's rules count state boards of dentistry among its reporters.

Whether your practice can query it directly is its own eligibility question; our guide to NPDB queries covers who qualifies and how a candidate's self-query works.

For a candidate licensed in other states, run each issuing board's own lookup — the Illinois tool verifies Illinois credentials only.

California's DCA License Search shows what to capture: whether a license is current, expired, or has been subject to discipline such as suspension or revocation.

Save what you ran, not just what you concluded: a dated screenshot or PDF of each lookup result, the Consolidated Reports check, the credential type you matched against the role, and who ran it.

IDFPR's daily updates mean the record you capture is the record as of that day; your file's job is to show what it said when you ran it.

Credentialing several people at once: IDFPR's Bulk License Look Up checks multiple individuals at once, limited to the Division of Professional Regulation, Real Estate and collection agencies — and its data updates weekly rather than daily, so for a single urgent hire use the single-license tool.

Anchor the re-check to the record: re-run the lookup before the credential expires, and whenever the person's role changes.

A license check is one screen among several: our guide to OIG exclusion checks covers whether a candidate is excluded from federal health care programs, and when it applies.

And before the contract that follows the offer — if the associate you are hiring is leaving another practice, read our guide to non-competes in Illinois before you draft anything.