How to Verify a Dental License in Texas Before You Hire

The Texas State Board of Dental Examiners (TSBDE) is the licensing board for the state's dental professions: it licenses dentists and dental hygienists, and it issues dental assistant registrations and certificates.

One public license search covers the people it licenses and registers.

The board performs daily updates to its website and considers it a secure, primary source for license verification, maintained solely by board staff.

Practically, that means the record you pull yourself comes straight from the board — you are not relying on a third-party summary or a photocopy the candidate supplies.

Verification is not licensure.

How someone earns a Texas credential is on our dentist licensure requirements in Texas page; this guide is about confirming that the credential in front of you is current before you hire.

Hiring outside Texas too?

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

Run your candidate through the board's public license search.

The board says the search verifies a licensee's or registrant's current license status and shows any public actions taken against a licensee or registrant — and it states plainly that all disciplinary actions and remedial plans can be found using this search.

Run the Licensee Search for the candidate's name and match the record to the person before you rely on it.

The board's page also notes that a license can be verified through the State of Texas Licensing System if you want a second route.

Sedation is a separate check.

A dentist licensed in Texas must obtain a TSBDE anesthesia permit for nitrous oxide/oxygen inhalation sedation and for each sedation level: Level 1 minimal sedation, Level 2 moderate enteral sedation, Level 3 moderate parenteral sedation, and Level 4 deep sedation or general anesthesia.

If your associate will sedate patients, confirm the permit itself rather than treating the license as proof of it — ask which permit level they hold and match what they claim to the board's record or a copy of the permit.

What the search returns for a permit was not something this research could capture, so don't let a license result settle it by assumption.

Permits have a standing requirement behind them, too: an applicant for a Texas sedation/anesthesia permit should be in good standing with the TSBDE, which defines good standing as a license that is not suspended, whether or not the suspension is probated.

So for a candidate who needs the permit, a suspension of any kind — probated or not — falls outside that definition; resolve it with the candidate before you schedule sedation cases.

Hygienists verify on the same TSBDE public license search — the board licenses dental hygienists, and its search covers licensees and registrants alike.

Run the name before day one exactly as you would for a dentist, and save what comes back with the date on it.

If a hygienist candidate tells you they hold an authorization beyond the license, confirm it before you build the schedule around it.

How authorizations beyond the license surface in the Texas search was not something this research could confirm, so ask for the specifics and check them against the record rather than assuming the license covers them.

What Texas requires a hygienist to hold before they can practice — and what each authorization allows them to do — is on our dental hygienist requirements in Texas page.

This page owns making sure the credential itself is current.

For assistants, the board issues registrations and certificates rather than licenses, and the certificate your operatory runs on is the x-ray one: in Texas, a dental assistant must hold a Dental Assistant Radiology Certificate issued by the State Board of Dental Examiners to legally position or expose dental x-rays.

That makes the certificate the check to run before anyone takes a radiograph in your practice.

Verify the certificate itself before the first patient, and match it to the person rather than to a résumé line.

Match every other credential to the duties you are assigning, too: the question is whether the authorization is there for what this job does.

How an assistant earns the radiology certificate, and what else Texas requires of dental assistants, is on our dental assistant requirements in Texas page.

Discipline is public information in Texas.

Texas Occupations Code § 263.002(a) authorizes the TSBDE to issue a warning or a reprimand, place a licensee on probated suspension, place a licensee on enforced suspension, or revoke a license — and the board says these disciplinary actions are public information, findable by doing a Licensee Search, with board orders also listed by fiscal year.

When something shows up on your candidate, read the actual order: a reprimand and a revocation are different risk profiles, and the candidate deserves the chance to explain what happened and where it stands.

The TSBDE search verifies Texas credentials.

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

Practices that cannot query the NPDB directly get there through the candidate: any practitioner can run a self-query and share it with you, and the NPDB does not send self-query results to third parties.

Our guide to NPDB queries covers eligibility and how it works.

Out-of-state licenses verify at their source.

Licenses are issued and verified state by state — this research found no national dental license lookup covering every state — so for each state where a candidate has practiced, run that state's own board lookup the same way you run the TSBDE's.

Save what you checked and when: the date of the search, the name as you ran it, and a screenshot or PDF of the result, plus copies of any permits and certificates the candidate gave you.

The board performs daily updates to the site, so what you pull reflects its data that day — which is exactly why the date on your copy matters.

Re-run the check on a schedule you will actually keep, and again whenever someone's role changes — a new duty, like sedation coverage or radiographs, is a new credential to verify.

Put the re-check on the calendar rather than trusting memory.

A clean license is not the whole screen.

If your practice bills Medicaid or CHIP, an exclusion check belongs next to the license check for every hire: those programs count as federal health care programs, and OIG advises health care entities to routinely check its exclusion list so that new hires and current employees are not on it.

Our guide to OIG exclusion checks covers when and how.

Verification and paperwork land in the same week of hiring.

If your new associate is coming from another Texas practice, it is worth understanding non-competes in Texas before you set a start date.