How to Verify a Dental License in Maryland Before You Hire

Dentists, dental hygienists and certified dental assistants in Maryland are regulated by the Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners, part of the Maryland Department of Health; its "License Verification" link goes to the board's own online verification site — the record that matters when you hire.

Verification is not licensure: how someone earns the credential is on our dentist licensure requirements in Maryland page.

This page is about confirming it is real and current before day one.

Hiring outside Maryland too?

Our how to verify a dental license guide covers the whole process.

Open the person search on the board's verification site — dentist, hygienist, dental radiation technologist, EFDA and the hygienist local anesthesia and nitrous oxide credentials are all license types there.

The board says anyone can verify the status of an individual license on the site, and lists these verifiable statuses: Active, Deceased, Inactive, Non-Renewed, Probation, Expired and Voluntarily Non-Renewed.

For a new associate you want Active.

Probation signals board discipline — see below.

Expired and Non-Renewed are not current statuses; hold the start date until the candidate shows one.

One limit: Revoked and Suspended are not among the board's verifiable statuses, and this research could not confirm whether those records display at all.

A blank result is not proof of a clean history — where a candidate's history involves either, confirm it with the board in writing.

Sedation verifies separately: the site's second search covers facilities, certificates and permits, including the board's Class I, Class II and Class III anesthesia permits.

Under COMAR 10.44.12, Class I covers moderate enteral sedation, Class II moderate parenteral sedation and Class III deep sedation and general anesthesia — and each facility where the dentist sedates must pass a facility evaluation.

Check both: the dentist's permit class and the facility record for each sedation location.

Hygienists verify in the same person search — dental hygienist is its own license type, same status list.

Confirm the Active record before the first patient day.

Then check the credentials the role uses: the person search covers hygienist local anesthesia (by infiltration and block) and nitrous oxide as license types of their own.

A hygienist who will numb patients or give nitrous needs each record verified — don't assume the base license answers it.

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

Maryland rewrote its dental assistant rules effective August 31, 2026 (COMAR 10.44.01), creating board-certified general duties and orthodontic expanded function dental assistant (EFDA) categories plus an uncertified "level one dental assistant" category — the category decides what there is to verify.

Level one assistants have nothing to look up: they may perform listed basic duties under a dentist's direct supervision without board certification, so a level one candidate has no record in the search.

Document the duties you assign instead.

EFDA work requires certification first: anyone other than a licensed dentist or hygienist must be expressly certified by the board as a general duties EFDA (or an orthodontic EFDA) before performing that category's listed intraoral procedures.

Both types appear in the person search — match what you find to the job's duties.

X-rays need their own credential: a Maryland dentist may not permit a dental assistant to place and expose radiographs unless the assistant is certified by the board as a dental radiation technologist, and an individual must be currently certified before practicing dental radiation technology.

That certification is its own license type in the person search — if the role includes x-rays, it is the record to check.

Watch for legacy "qualified" records.

Maryland no longer recognizes "dental assistant qualified in orthodontics": assistants recognized as qualified before August 31, 2026 may perform orthodontic EFDA duties only until February 28, 2027 unless they become certified orthodontic EFDAs.

"Qualified in general duties" is also gone; those assistants may perform level one duties without certification.

Qualified dental assistant records still appear in the person search, so an old record can display — check what it authorizes today.

How a Maryland assistant earns each of these credentials is on our dental assistant requirements in Maryland page.

The board posts public disciplinary orders online but warns they are not necessarily reflective of a licensee's current licensure status, pointing readers to the verification page for current status.

Use both: the orders explain what happened, and a Probation status in the person search tells you to go look.

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 or reprimands a dentist, places them on probation, or accepts a license surrender — and NPDB rules count a state Board of Dentistry among its reporters.

Any practitioner can also run a self-query and share the result; our NPDB queries guide covers the routes.

Other states, other lookups: licenses are issued and verified state by state — our research found no national lookup covering every state — so check an out-of-state license with the board that issued it.

A clear license is not the only screen: OIG advises health care entities to routinely check its exclusion list so new hires and current employees are not on it; our OIG exclusion checks guide explains when that matters.

Save what the search returns the day you run it — a dated screenshot of each record, the license or permit number, the status shown — with the hire file.

Re-run it when a credential renews or when duties change.

For a formal document rather than a screenshot: the verification site states that dental licensure verification requests cannot be provided via phone, and the board posts a Verification of Licensure Request Form — confirm the current fee and turnaround with the board before you rely on it for a start date.

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