How to Verify a Dental License in Ohio Before You Hire

The Ohio State Dental Board licenses dentists and dental hygienists, and it certifies dental assistant radiographers, coronal polishers and expanded function dental auxiliaries (EFDAs) — so every credential in that list traces back to the same board.

You verify all of them through one door: eLicense Ohio, the state's online License Look-Up, which covers the Dental Board among 24 state agencies, boards and commissions.

How someone earns a credential is a different question — our dentist licensure requirements in Ohio page owns that.

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

Hiring outside Ohio too?

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

In eLicense Ohio's License Look-Up, select the Dental Board and search by name or partial name, using % as a wildcard.

The board's own advice: a license-number search returns only that one license, and license number formats have changed over the years — if your search returns 0 records, search by name only.

Searching by name is also how you find all of a person's licenses, not just the one they quoted on their résumé.

Two things make an Ohio check straightforward. eLicense states that its look-up information comes directly from the state database and is updated daily.

And since October 1, 2018, the board has not issued letters of good standing or verification letters at all — it points to the eLicense "Verify a License" section as the real-time online certification/verification that replaces printed letters.

So don't ask a candidate for a board letter; there isn't one.

Run the look-up yourself and save a dated copy of what it returns.

Sedation is where a dentist hire needs more than the license.

The board issues dentists a General Anesthesia Permit and Moderate Sedation Permits — one for patients age 13 and over and a pediatric endorsement for patients under 13 — along with Oral Health Access Supervision and Teledentistry permits.

This research could not confirm that a permit displays in the eLicense look-up, so for an associate who will sedate, confirm the permit with the board directly instead of treating the license record as proof of it.

Hygienists verify in the same look-up: the board licenses dental hygienists, so the same name search covers them.

Run it exactly as you would for a dentist and save the dated result.

One permit series has its own public record: the board publishes a "Directory of Permit Holders" listing the dentists and dental hygienists who hold Oral Health Access Supervision Program permits.

If your hire will work under that program, the directory is the board's own list to check against.

What an Ohio hygienist may do once licensed, and any other credentials the role needs, is scope-of-practice detail — our dental hygienist requirements in Ohio page owns that question.

An Ohio assistant hire can carry several separate certificates: the board certifies dental assistant radiographers, coronal polishers and EFDAs as distinct certificates.

Match each certificate to the duties you are assigning and verify each one separately.

The dental assistant radiographer certificate is issued by the board, and it requires current certification as a dental assistant through the Dental Assisting National Board (DANB), the Ohio Commission on Dental Assistant Certification or the American Medical Technologists (AMT) — or completion of an Ohio Dental Board-approved dental radiography training program.

EFDA registration requires passing the Ohio EFDA exam, administered by the Commission on Dental Testing in Ohio or ADEX, plus current BLS.

Coronal polishing is its own board certificate as well.

One detail helps you match records to people: on the public look-up, only the city and state of a dental assistant applicant's address are shown.

Check the city against what the candidate told you before you rely on the result.

How an assistant earns each of these credentials is on our dental assistant requirements in Ohio page.

The eLicense look-up is the board's own record, but this research could not confirm what discipline information it shows — and board actions do not stop at Ohio's border.

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.

Only eligible entities may query the NPDB, so the practical route for a dental practice is the candidate's self-query: any health care practitioner, dentists included, can run one at any time and share the result with you, and the NPDB sends it only to the practitioner — ask your finalist for it.

Our NPDB queries guide covers the routes.

Other states, other look-ups: this research found no national lookup covering every state — licenses are issued and verified state by state — so verify an out-of-state credential with the board that issued it.

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

Save what you checked and when: a dated copy of each eLicense result — the dentist's or hygienist's license record, and each assistant certificate the role relies on — plus whatever permit confirmation you got from the board.

File it in the hire's record before day one. eLicense says its look-up data updates daily, but your saved copy proves only the day you pulled it: if the start date slips, run the look-ups again, and re-check whenever someone adds a permit, a certificate or an expanded function.

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