Methodology for the MentionFox Dentist Vetting Report. Updated 2026-05-10.
The MentionFox Dentist Vetting Report is a research synthesis built from public-record sources. It is NOT a license-of-record verification, NOT a clinical-competence assessment, NOT a substitute for a state dental board lookup of record, NOT malpractice insurance verification, and NOT a substitute for due diligence through your Credentialing Verification Organization. Read this page in full before relying on the report for a credentialing, hiring, referral, or care decision.
Dentistry is licensed state-by-state in the United States. There is no federal dental license; each of the 50 state dental boards (plus DC and territories) maintains its own licensure record, disciplinary action history, and renewal cycle. Dentists ARE NPI-covered (CMS taxonomy 1223G0001X for general practice plus distinct taxonomies per specialty). Dentists are also covered by the federal Sunshine Act / Open Payments program (alongside physicians, podiatrists, optometrists, chiropractors, and APRNs/PAs), so industry payment disclosures are public.
The Dentist Vetting Report covers identity, license status, specialty board certification, disciplinary history, education, practice setting, publication record where applicable, malpractice litigation surface (CourtListener), and federal exclusion status. Five use cases drive the report's framing:
Dentist resolution follows the canonical MentionFox vetter pattern: vetter-resolve-candidates → SubjectDisambiguation chooser → typed callback → handleConfirmSubject. NPI is the canonical identifier; when NPI is unknown, name + state + optional specialty drives the candidate set.
| Source | What it tells us | Class |
|---|---|---|
| CMS NPI Registry | Verified identity, primary taxonomy (general dentistry or specialty), practice address(es), enumeration date, NPI status, credential (DDS or DMD). | Federal-Primary |
| OIG LEIE | Federal exclusion from Medicare/Medicaid programs. Dental Medicaid billing fraud is a real signal; a positive match here is dispositive. | Federal-Primary |
| CMS Open Payments | Industry payments disclosed under the federal Sunshine Act. Dentists ARE covered. Total general payments, research payments, ownership/investment interests by reporting year. | Federal-Primary |
| State dental boards (50 states + DC + territories) | State licensure status, license number of record, renewal date, disciplinary actions of record. Each state has a different lookup URL, surfaced directly so credentialing-of-record check is one click away. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ADA Find-a-Dentist | American Dental Association membership lookup. ADA membership is voluntary but commonly held; absence is not a negative signal. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| AGD / ABGD | Academy of General Dentistry membership and Master / Fellow designations. Mastership requires 1100 hours of approved continuing education and exams. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABOMS | American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery — board certification in oral surgery. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABO | American Board of Orthodontics — board certification in orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABPD | American Board of Pediatric Dentistry — board certification in pediatric dentistry. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABE | American Board of Endodontics — board certification in endodontics. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABPerio | American Board of Periodontology — board certification in periodontics. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABOMP | American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology — board certification in oral pathology. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABOMR | American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology — board certification in oral radiology. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABDPH | American Board of Dental Public Health — board certification in dental public health. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ABProsthodontics | American Board of Prosthodontics — board certification in prosthodontics. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| ADEA member institutions | American Dental Education Association — accredited US dental school list, used to verify the subject's claimed degree-granting institution. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| CourtListener | Free Law Project federal and state court records — civil malpractice case search bounded by strict defamation framing. | Authoritative-Secondary |
| PubMed E-utilities | Total publications in dental and oral-health journals (J Am Dent Assoc, J Dent Res, J Endod, J Periodontol, etc.). Most clinical dentists publish little; section degrades to "consistent with clinical-practice focus" below 10 pubs. | Federal-Primary |
| Yelp, Google patient reviews | Patient experience signal at the practice level. Treated as patient-experience signal, never as clinical-quality assessment. | Aggregator |
Each cited source falls into one of three classes, weighted differently when the synthesis evaluates evidence strength:
Every assertion in a Dentist Vetting Report is an atomic claim that links back to a specific verified URL. There are no synthesised summaries that float without citations. If the synthesis cannot point to a specific public source for a fact, the fact is replaced with the [insufficient public evidence as of {date}] tag. Examples of atomic claims and their canonical citation targets:
Each of the 12 report sections receives a confidence score from 0 to 100. Probabilistic claims within a section use the PHIA probability vocabulary (almost no chance / very unlikely / unlikely / roughly even chance / likely / very likely / almost certain). Bands are picked based on data density. When evidence is thin, the band defaults to "roughly even chance" with an explicit "[insufficient public evidence]" tag and the section receives an "unverified" flag. Triggers for the section-level "unverified" flag:
Dentist verification carries elevated legal risk: a false claim that lowers a clinician's professional standing can be defamatory per se. The synthesis follows a strict cite-don't-characterize policy:
Generated last. Pulls verdict-relevant facts from each prior section: NPI status, OIG result, specialty board cert, state license status, Open Payments totals, and any HIGH-severity flags.
Verified-identity record from NPI Registry + state dental board licensure status. Credentials (DDS or DMD), enumeration date, primary taxonomy, sub-specialty taxonomies, license states.
Diplomate status across ABGD, ABOMS, ABO, ABP, ABE, ABPerio, ABOMP, ABOMR, ABDPH, ABProsthodontics. Practice setting (solo / group / DSO / academic / hospital). AGD Master or Fellow designations.
The single highest-stakes section. Leads with OIG LEIE result. State dental board lookup URL surfaced for direct verification. Each state of claimed practice is cross-checked.
Dental school (verified against ADEA member-institution list), residency training (when applicable), AEGD or GPR program, sub-specialty training program.
CMS Open Payments record by reporting year. General payments, research payments, ownership/investment interests. Compared to specialty median.
Practice locations from NPI record. DSO affiliation if applicable. Hospital staff appointments where surfaced via state board secondary disclosure.
Five archetype-matched peers from the comparable_dentists_reference table (~30 seeded entries spanning 10 specialties and four practice settings). Composite scoring on specialty, practice setting, career stage, and archetype.
Yelp + Google Reviews aggregation for the practice (where applicable). Reviews are characterized as patient experience.
CourtListener civil malpractice case search with dental-specific terms ("dental malpractice", "endodontic malpractice", "implant complication"). Bounded by strong disclaimers.
PubMed co-authorship graph. Specialty-board cohort connections. ADA / AGD fellow co-listings.
JS-aggregated audit trail of every URL cited across the prior 11 sections, deduplicated and grouped by source class.
Source data is re-crawled on a per-source cadence calibrated to how often each source updates:
Stale-flag triggers: if a re-crawl fails three times consecutively, the section is flagged "stale (last verified YYYY-MM-DD)" and the section confidence score is capped at 60 until re-crawl succeeds.
Read top-to-bottom. The Executive Summary surfaces the verdict-relevant facts; the section-by-section detail backs each. Pay special attention to: (a) any HIGH-severity flag in the License & Disciplinary History section, (b) any positive OIG LEIE match (dispositive signal), (c) any Open Payments figure that is more than 5x the specialty median (raises a yellow flag for industry-influence review), and (d) any unverified-flag on the Identity section, which means the requester did not finalize disambiguation. A clean report on all four of those signals is the typical pattern for the median dentist; flags require follow-up against the cited primary source.
If you are the subject of a report and believe a fact is wrong, email corrections@mentionfox.com with: (1) the report ID, (2) the specific atomic claim you contest, (3) a public URL that supports the correction. We respond within 3 business days. Confirmed errors are corrected in the report and a correction notice is added to the report's audit trail.
Dentist Snapshot: 25 credits ($10). Dentist Full Vetting Report: 200 credits ($80). Snapshots cover the Identity, License, and OIG sections only; Full Reports cover all 12 sections plus the Comparable Dentists peer-set. Pricing is denominated in credits because credit packs scale with use; one-off purchases are also available at the per-credit rate.
Every claim in a Dentist Vetting Report cites a public URL the reader can verify. Claims without citations do not appear — replaced with the [insufficient public evidence as of {date}] tag. Reports are auditable: a credentialing committee or due-diligence reviewer can re-run the verification chain by hand from the citations alone.