How to Verify a Dental License in West Virginia Before You Hire

The West Virginia Board of Dentistry regulates the profession of dentistry and licenses dentists and dental hygienists in the state — one board for both clinical licenses, so a dentist hire and a hygienist hire start in the same place.

The board's website runs on a GL Suite portal, and both hiring tools sit on it: a License Verifications search and a Board Actions page listing disciplinary consent decrees and orders by licensee name.

What the search displays for each record could not be confirmed in our research — treat it as a first look, and rely on the verification letter covered below for the document in your file.

This page is the West Virginia chapter — the national process is in our guide to how to verify a dental license.

The board's home page links to the License Verifications search on its GL Suite portal.

For a dentist hire, run the candidate's name, read what the record returns, and check that the name and any license details it shows match their application.

The board's FAQ says that once you find the name, you can click Order Verification and order and pay online, or mail a written request — or the board's Verification Letter Request Form — with a check for $23.00.

The fee is as posted in October 2026, so confirm the current amount when you order.

Sedation is the separate credential.

Under West Virginia Code § 30-4A-3, the board issues dentists anesthesia permits by class: Class 2 for anxiolysis/minimal sedation, Class 3 for conscious/moderate sedation — a limited enteral permit (3a) and/or a comprehensive parenteral permit (3b) — and Class 4 for general anesthesia/deep sedation.

Our research could not confirm whether the online search displays permit classes, so ask a sedation-trained candidate which class they hold and confirm the permit with the board before scheduling sedation cases.

Bringing in an anesthesiologist has its own requirement: under West Virginia Code § 30-4A-3(b), when a physician or dentist anesthesiologist provides anesthesia in a dental office, the facility must be inspected and approved for a Class 4 permit and the dentist must hold at least a Class 2 permit.

How a dentist earns a West Virginia license in the first place is the candidate's side of the desk — our guide to dentist licensure requirements in West Virginia covers that.

Hygienists verify in the same place: the board licenses dental hygienists alongside dentists, so you run the same License Verifications search for a hygienist candidate and order the same verification letter for the file.

What the search shows beyond the license itself — any board-issued permit a hygienist holds — could not be confirmed in our research.

So make the candidate do the listing: ask them to identify each board-issued permit or credential the role depends on, collect copies, and confirm each with the board before their first day.

What West Virginia requires to become a hygienist, and the duties the license covers, is on our dental hygienist requirements in West Virginia page.

Start with the surprise: x-rays.

The board's FAQ says an assistant does not need any permit from the Dental or Radiology board to take x-rays in the dental office — with the limit in the same answer: the x-rays can only be intraoral (neck up), and cannot be taken for any other purposes or on other parts of the body.

For intraoral radiography there is no x-ray permit to look up and no radiography credential to chase.

Beyond x-rays, our research could not source a list of West Virginia assistant registrations or expanded-duty certificates, so work from the candidate: ask exactly what certificates they hold, collect copies, and confirm with the board anything the role depends on.

One credential you can check from your desk: a candidate holding a DANB certification can be verified on DANB's Verify Credentials tool, which confirms DANB national certifications (such as the CDA), national exam certificates, and DANB-administered state certificates — limited to Arizona and Oregon.

A DANB credential is a national certification, not a West Virginia authorization to practice.

The full duty list for West Virginia assistants is on our dental assistant requirements in West Virginia page.

Discipline is a separate look: the board posts disciplinary actions — consent decrees and orders — by licensee name on its Board Actions page, so search every finalist by name rather than stopping at the license record.

Board discipline also has a federal shadow.

When a state dental board acts on a dentist's professional competence or conduct — revoking, suspending or restricting a license, censuring, reprimanding, placing the dentist on probation, or accepting a license surrender — it must report the action to the National Practitioner Data Bank, and the NPDB's regulations count a state Board of Dentistry among its reporters.

Direct queries are limited to hospitals and to health care entities that provide care and run a formal peer review process — if your practice is not one of them, the route is the candidate's self-query: any practitioner can run one, the NPDB sends the response only to the practitioner, and they may share it with whomever they choose.

Ask your dentist finalist for one.

Our guide to NPDB queries covers eligibility and the self-query in depth.

A clean board record also says nothing about federal exclusion status — OIG advises health care entities to routinely check the LEIE so new hires and current employees are not on it; our guide to OIG exclusion checks covers when a practice needs it.

And a West Virginia check covers only West Virginia: licenses are issued and verified state by state, and our research found no national dental license lookup, so run any other state's board lookup too — and save the last-updated date it shows, because update speed varies from board to board.

A verification is only worth what you can prove.

For each hire, save the date you ran each check, the name you entered, a screenshot or PDF of what the record showed, and the board verification letter once it arrives.

Run the checks close to the start date, not at first contact, and re-run them before you renew an employment agreement — an old printout says nothing about the license today.

From there the file joins the rest of the hire: references, other background checks and, once the offer is real, the paperwork.

If your hire is arriving from another West Virginia practice, check what the state allows before you draft restrictive covenants — our guide to non-competes in West Virginia covers how the state treats them.