How to Verify a Dental License in Indiana Before You Hire

Two Indiana agencies split the work.

Dentists and dental hygienists are licensed through the Indiana State Board of Dentistry, administered by the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency (IPLA), and the board's own page links "Verify a license" to the state's MyLicense e-Verification search.

Dental assisting is the exception: IPLA does not issue licenses, permits or certification for dental assisting, and it sends assistants who need x-ray certification to the state health department.

So the assistant's x-ray credential exists — a different agency issues it, covered below.

What a candidate did to earn the license — education, exams, application — is the licensure question, and our dentist licensure requirements in Indiana page covers it.

This page is about confirming the credential before you put the hire on the schedule.

Start at MyLicense e-Verification, Indiana's Web Lookup/Verification.

Anyone can search by name or license number, and wildcard searches are allowed — useful when you are not sure how a candidate spells a hyphenated last name.

Pick the license type before you search.

The dental entries include Dentist, Dental Hygienist, Dental Anesthesia Permit, Dental Hygiene Anesthesia Permit and Dental Radiographer, plus Dental Instructor, Dental Faculty, and Dental Residency and intern permits.

Check the permit separately from the license when the associate will sedate patients.

Indiana issues a dentist permit to use general anesthesia, deep sedation or light parenteral conscious sedation, so run a second search on the Dental Anesthesia Permit type — a current dentist license does not answer the sedation question.

One gap to plan around: this page's research confirmed the search form, not what each result page displays, so save a dated screenshot of whatever the record shows when you run it — and use the official verification described at the end when you need a formal document for the file.

Hygienists verify in the same lookup: Dental Hygienist is its own license type in e-Verification, so confirm the record before the first patient day.

Local anesthetic is the permit to watch.

Indiana issues a separate Dental Hygiene Anesthesia Permit for hygienists who give local anesthetic — if your hygienist will numb patients, search that permit type as well as the license.

Nitrous oxide is different.

The Indiana Board of Dentistry has no license or permit for administering nitrous oxide; IC 25-13-1-10.7 sets what a dental hygienist needs to administer it.

There is no nitrous permit to find in the lookup, so don't send your office manager hunting for one — ask the candidate what they hold and verify the underlying license.

The education and exam side of hygiene licensure is on our dental hygienist requirements in Indiana page.

The dental board does not credential assistants — but an Indiana assistant who takes x-rays is not credential-free.

The Indiana Department of Health (IDOH), through its Division of Radiology and Weights & Measures, issues the Indiana Dental Radiographer License.

A first-time Indiana Dental Radiographer License calls for a CODA-accredited or IDOH-approved dental radiography program, clinical training and a passing DANB RHS or CDA exam.

When you hire, verify the resulting license rather than a course completion certificate.

The lookup is still e-Verification — Dental Radiographer is one of its searchable license types — so the radiographer license verifies in the same place as the dentist's, even though IDOH issues it.

Out-of-state x-ray credentials do not transfer: Indiana does not have reciprocity with other states for them, and a radiology permit, license or certificate from another state is not accepted.

An experienced assistant moving in from out of state still needs the Indiana license, so verify the Indiana record, not the card from the old state.

The full scope picture for the role is on our dental assistant requirements in Indiana page.

Discipline is a separate IPLA search.

The online discipline search shows actions taken within the previous 90 days by default, older actions sit behind Advanced Search, and IPLA says disciplinary information is refreshed weekly.

Plan around the limits: IPLA states it does not guarantee that its online disciplinary information is complete and accurate in all instances.

A clean result is not proof of a clean record — run Advanced Search for older actions, and don't stop there.

Board discipline also follows a dentist nationally.

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 NPDB rules count a state Board of Dentistry among its reporters.

A practice that cannot query the NPDB directly has another route: any practitioner can run a self-query and share the result; our NPDB queries guide covers who can query and how to ask a candidate.

Other states, other lookups: licenses are issued and verified state by state — our research found no national lookup that covers every state — so check an incoming hire's out-of-state license with the board that issued it, and our how to verify a dental license guide runs through the other states.

A clear license is not the only screen worth running, either; pair it with OIG exclusion checks where your payer mix makes them relevant.

Keep three artifacts per hire: a dated screenshot of each e-Verification record you pulled, the discipline search result, and — when you need the formal document — an official verification.

Indiana's official verification is a digitally certified PDF bought online for $10.60 total, and IPLA says this is the only way to obtain an official verification of an Indiana license.

For the people you already employ, Indiana's LicenseWatch is a paid subscription that emails you when a tracked licensee's record changes — expired license, renewal, expiration or status change.

It turns re-checking a roster from a calendar chore into an alert.

Once the checks clear and you move to the offer, the contract is the next Indiana-specific question — our guide to non-competes in Indiana covers what holds up there.