How to Verify a Dental License in Utah Before You Hire

In Utah, dental licenses and permits are issued by the Utah Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL), and they are verified through DOPL's free Licensee Lookup & Verification System.

The Utah Dentist and Dental Hygienist Licensing Board sits in an advisory role — it advises DOPL rather than issuing licenses — so the board is not where your verification happens.

DOPL's lookup is.

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

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

Hiring outside Utah too?

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

DOPL's Licensee Lookup & Verification System is free to use, and you can filter the search by license type.

In Utah the permits are license types of their own in that filter list: Dentist - Local Anesthesia Permit, Dentist - Minimal Sedation Permit, Dentist - Moderate Sedation Permit, and Dentist - Deep Sedation and General Anesthesia Permit — with a Dentist Controlled Substance type appearing alongside them.

The permits really are separate from the license: DOPL runs dentists a combined application path for the minimal sedation, moderate sedation, deep sedation and general anesthesia permits, distinct from the dentist license itself.

(DOPL's own sedation-permit page still carries the older "Anesthesia Class B, C, D, E Permit" naming in its title — same permits, older labels.)

So for an associate who will sedate, don't stop at the license record: find the permit record that matches the level of sedation your practice will offer.

If a candidate lists a Local Anesthesia Permit, confirm that record too.

The easiest way to see the whole picture is the core license number.

Search by a person's core number and the lookup shows every license they hold; use the core number plus a four-digit identifier for one specific license.

One search, then, puts a dentist's sedation and controlled-substance records together on screen — not just whichever credentials they listed on their résumé.

The system also displays an "Information Current as of" date; note it when you save the result.

Hygienists verify in the same system, and the filter list gives hygienist credentials their own types: Dental Hygienist, and Dental Hygienist with Local Anesthesia.

If a candidate lists the local anesthesia credential, pull that record the same way — a core-number search shows a hygienist's licenses together, just as it does for a dentist.

What a Utah hygienist may do once licensed, and what each duty requires, is scope-of-practice detail — our dental hygienist requirements in Utah page owns that question.

Assistants are the exception to everything above: Utah law (Utah Code § 58-69-102) defines a dental assistant as an unlicensed individual who performs supervised acts and duties defined by DOPL rule.

There is no state assistant license to look up in DOPL's system — which moves the verification onto paperwork you collect and keep.

Ask for the certificates behind the duties you are assigning and keep copies in the hire's record.

Radiography is the one to be careful with: this research did not confirm Utah's assistant radiography training rule, so before someone takes radiographs, verify their x-ray course certificate directly and confirm with DOPL what the role requires.

A national credential has its own check: DANB's online Verify Credentials tool confirms whether a person holds DANB credentials — national certifications such as the CDA among them.

How an assistant qualifies for each duty is on our dental assistant requirements in Utah page.

The lookup speaks plainly about probation: a license on probation shows the status "Active on Probation" — DOPL now labels all probationary licenses that way alone, retiring the older "Restricted Active on Probation" label.

Treat any status line that is not a clean active record as a stop-and-ask before you proceed.

What the status line does not promise is the paperwork behind it — this research could not confirm whether DOPL's system displays discipline documents — so don't read it as the whole story.

For board actions, the National Practitioner Data Bank is the cross-check: 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 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 the NPDB sends the result only to the practitioner — ask your finalist to share 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: if your practice bills Medicaid or CHIP, 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 lookup result — the dentist's or hygienist's license record, and every permit record the role relies on — plus the certificates you collected for assistants.

The core-number search makes this a one-page job, because a single result captures every license the person holds.

File it all in the hire's record before day one, and re-run the look-ups if the start date slips, or whenever someone adds a permit or takes on new duties.

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