How to Verify a Dental License in Mississippi Before You Hire

Dentists, dental hygienists and radiology permit holders in Mississippi are all licensed by the Mississippi State Board of Dental Examiners, and the board's Licensee Search covers all three groups.

Dental assistants are the exception: the board does not license dental assistants to perform dental assisting duties — the board credential that matters for x-rays is the Radiology Permit, and that is searchable.

That split decides where you verify each hire:

New to this?

Start with how to verify a dental license for the general workflow; the Mississippi specifics are below.

Open the board's Licensee Search and filter by license type — for a dentist, Dental, Dental - Provisional or Dental - Specialty.

Match the type to the hire: you are telling the search which license to return, so read the result before you rely on it.

Mississippi's status list is where discipline surfaces: Active, Inactive, Disciplined, Probation, Restricted, Suspended, Revoked, Surrendered, Retired, Void and others.

Read the status, not just the name match, and resolve anything other than Active with the board before you make an offer.

Sedation is its own credential.

Mississippi Board Regulation 30 sets three advanced anesthesia permit classes — Class 1 (deep sedation/general anesthesia), Class 2 (moderate sedation) and Class 3 (minimal/enteral sedation), with pediatric endorsements — so match the class to the sedation you plan to offer.

No license type for those permits appears in the search filter, and whether the search can verify them could not be confirmed when this page was researched: ask which class the dentist holds and confirm it with the board.

Earning the license is a different topic — see our guide to dentist licensure requirements in Mississippi.

Hygienists come back from the same Licensee Search: filter for Hygienist or Hygienist - Provisional, and read the status and the type the same way you would for a dentist.

The third filter is the one that changes how you staff: Hygienist General Supervision.

In Mississippi, hygienists must be registered by the board to practice under general supervision — Board Regulation 13, an emergency rule effective July 1, 2025.

If the role involves general supervision, check for that registration instead of assuming the base license carries it.

Local anesthesia is a separate credential too: a Mississippi dental hygienist may administer local anesthesia only after board certification — a CODA course plus exam, with a $50 initial fee.

That certification is not a license type in the search filter, and whether the search can confirm it was not verifiable when this page was researched, so ask for the certification and confirm it with the board.

What the credentials take to earn: our guide to dental hygienist requirements in Mississippi.

There is no assistant license to look up — the board does not license dental assistants to perform dental assisting duties.

The x-ray question has a hard answer, though: before exposing radiographs, a dental assistant must hold a currently valid Mississippi Radiology Permit issued by the State Board of Dental Examiners.

That permit is searchable, under the Radiology license type.

Two Mississippi rules matter when you hire from out of state.

Credentials do not transfer: the board does not issue radiology permits based on reciprocity, credentials or licensure from other states, so an assistant fully credentialed elsewhere still needs their own Mississippi Radiology Permit before exposing radiographs.

And a lapse is final: under Board Regulation 25, a radiology permit that is not renewed is voided and cannot be reinstated — the holder applies again as a new applicant.

A national credential is worth checking too — DANB's Verify Credentials tool confirms whether a person holds DANB certifications such as the CDA — but it confirms the certification, not Mississippi's authorization.

For x-rays, the credential to verify is the state Radiology Permit.

The full scope picture is in our guide to dental assistant requirements in Mississippi.

The Mississippi status list doubles as your discipline screen: Disciplined, Probation, Restricted, Suspended, Revoked and Surrendered all appear alongside Active and Inactive.

A status alone does not say whether the matter was a reprimand or a revocation, or whether it is resolved — get the detail from the board before going further.

Board discipline also surfaces at the National Practitioner Data Bank: state dental boards must report 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 is limited to eligible entities, so when your practice cannot query directly, the practical route is the candidate's self-query, which the practitioner may share with whomever they choose.

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

The Mississippi search covers Mississippi's records.

A candidate who has practiced in another state needs a check against that state's board too — 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 items or services they furnish, order or prescribe, and those programs include Medicaid and CHIP.

Save what you saw, the day you saw it: screenshot or print each Licensee Search result — license type, status, and any dates the record shows — and file it with the hire's paperwork.

A dated copy beats a recollection later, and it shows what the board's record said on the day you checked.

When you need the board's own formal record rather than a screenshot, order it through the search itself: since June 1, 2025, certified verifications of Mississippi dental and dental hygiene licenses are ordered only through the board's License Search, via the Certified Verification button on the licensee's record.

Calendar what expires: re-run each search around the dates you recorded, and again before someone takes on a duty that needs a separate credential — a sedation class, hygiene local anesthesia, radiography.

Once screening is clear, the contract stage has its own limits: our guide to non-competes in Mississippi covers what a practice there can and cannot put in one.