How to Verify a Dental License in Kentucky Before You Hire

The Kentucky Board of Dentistry licenses dentists and dental hygienists in Kentucky and keeps a searchable online registry of the professionals it licenses — and not just them: registered dental laboratories, sedation facilities and mobile dental units are searchable too.

The board's Licensee Search link points to its online portal, and the board directs people there to verify license status.

What you verify depends on the role, because Kentucky treats the three chairside roles very differently:

New to the process?

Start with how to verify a dental license for the general workflow, then apply the Kentucky specifics below.

Search the board's licensee portal by the candidate's name and compare the result against the license certificate they gave you — name spelling first, and the license number if the record shows one.

The board tells people they can verify license status on that search page, so read the status the record shows rather than stopping at a name match.

One caveat: the search portal blocked our automated check, so we cannot confirm exactly which fields a Kentucky record displays.

Read the status and any actions the record lists, and confirm anything unclear with the board before you decide.

Need more than the website shows?

The board's formal route is a written Verification of Licensure, requested through the Licensee Portal's Documents Request menu or on its printable Verification of Licensure form sent to the office.

The board describes that route for current and former licensees and does not say whether an employer can order one, so ask before counting on it.

Sedation is a separate question from the license.

Kentucky issues dentists Moderate Sedation and Deep Sedation/General Anesthesia permits, each with adult and pediatric subtypes, and separately certifies the facilities where those levels of sedation are given.

No permit is needed for nitrous oxide or minimal sedation; a board permit is required for moderate sedation or higher.

If your associate will sedate, ask which level and patient subtype the permit covers before you build the schedule around it.

What it takes to earn a Kentucky dental license is a different question — our guide to dentist licensure requirements in Kentucky covers it; this page is about confirming credentials a candidate already holds.

A Kentucky hygienist verifies in the same search as a dentist.

The license is not the whole picture, though: several duties a hygienist cannot perform on the license alone sit on separate board registrations.

Kentucky hygienists need a separate board registration to give local anesthesia, practice under general supervision, insert IV access lines, perform laser debridement or practice as a public health hygienist.

Those special privileges are identified on the hygienist's license and must be renewed with the hygiene license to remain active.

Before you build a schedule around anesthesia or general supervision, run the search and read the license itself — the resume line is not the credential.

What each registration takes to earn is on our guide to dental hygienist requirements in Kentucky.

For dental assistants, the lookup can't help you, because there is nothing to look up: Kentucky does not issue a dental assistant license.

An assistant maintains CPR certification and is registered with the board — and that registration is the employer dentist's responsibility, not the assistant's.

It means the employer dentist updates the names of their assistants as part of the dentist's own license renewal every two years; the assistant files nothing.

Expect no assistant record from the search and rely on documents instead.

Titles will not do the verifying for you either.

Kentucky does not recognize EDDA or EFDA titles, and "Registered Dental Assistant (RDA)" in Kentucky only means an employer dentist registered the assistant — not a recognition of special training or achievement.

The board issues no formal authorization for expanded duties such as coronal polishing, radiography or IV access lines; verifying the assistant's education is the employing dentist's job.

X-rays show the pattern.

Kentucky issues no dental radiography certificate: an assistant taking x-rays must have completed a six hour course in dental radiography safety and four hours of instruction in dental radiographic technique, and the employer dentist — not the board — verifies that training.

House Bill 776, signed April 13, 2026, amended the Dental Practice Act (KRS 313) to clarify that board-approved training in radiography technique and safety does not have to be through a formal course, so ask what documentation the candidate holds for the training rather than for a specific certificate.

What each of those requirements takes to satisfy is on our guide to dental assistant requirements in Kentucky.

Treat the license search as one input, not the whole discipline check.

The board posts disciplinary actions online, but that list is not exhaustive: older actions, documents related to ongoing investigations and certain legally protected information are not posted.

For a detailed disciplinary account, the board says to file an open records request.

For a fuller picture, ask about the National Practitioner Data Bank.

State dental boards must report to the NPDB any action based on professional competence or conduct that revokes, suspends or restricts a dentist's license, censures, reprimands or places a dentist on probation, or accepts a license surrender — and dental boards count as NPDB reporters.

Querying the NPDB is limited to eligible entities: apart from hospitals, a health care entity is one that provides health care services and engages in professional review activity through a formal peer review process, so the practical route is a candidate self-query, which the practitioner may share with whomever they choose.

Our guide to NPDB queries covers who can query and how.

A Kentucky search covers Kentucky's records.

If your candidate has practiced in another state, verify that license with the issuing state's own dental board — our research found no single national dental license lookup.

And run the rest of your screening alongside the license check, OIG exclusion checks included: someone excluded by HHS-OIG can receive no payment from federal health care programs for the items or services they furnish, order or prescribe, and those programs include Medicaid and CHIP.

Save what you saw.

Screenshot or print each search result on the day you run it — the status it shows, and any expiration date or actions the record lists — and file it with the hire's paperwork.

A dated copy is much easier to produce later than a recollection.

Kentucky puts one assistant recordkeeping rule on you directly: a personnel file for each dental assistant containing a copy of their current CPR certification and documentation of any expanded-duty training the assistant has been authorized to perform.

Collect it at hire, and refresh it as cards and training records expire.

Verification is not one-and-done.

Re-run each search around a renewal — assistant registration rides on your own two-year dentist renewal, and hygienist privileges renew with the hygiene license — and before someone takes on a duty that needs its own credential, such as sedation.

When screening is clear, the contract stage brings its own questions; our guide to non-competes in Kentucky covers what a practice there can and cannot put in one.