State of U.S. Dentistry 2026
This report summarizes the U.S. dental provider landscape as recorded in our directory, which is built from the federal NPI registry, and compares it with Census population estimates and federal dental shortage designations. Every figure below is calculated from those datasets; see methodology and sources at the end.
Key numbers
- 356,518 dental provider listings in total
- 255,303 individual providers and 101,215 organizations
- 10.5 listings per 10,000 residents (50 states + DC; 7.5 counting individuals only)
- 17,949 NPIs first issued in 2025 or 2026 (9,208 in 2025, 8,741 so far in 2026)
- 7,116 designated dental shortage areas in the 50 states and DC (HRSA)
Highest and lowest listing density
Top 10 (per 10,000 residents)
- District of Columbia – 16.4
- Massachusetts – 16.1
- Alaska – 14.3
- California – 13.1
- Colorado – 13.0
- Hawaii – 12.7
- Washington – 12.5
- Illinois – 12.3
- Connecticut – 12.1
- New Hampshire – 12.0
Bottom 10
- Delaware – 7.1
- Alabama – 7.3
- Mississippi – 7.4
- Georgia – 7.5
- Arkansas – 7.8
- Louisiana – 7.8
- Tennessee – 8.0
- West Virginia – 8.2
- Indiana – 8.7
- Kentucky – 8.7
The District of Columbia is entirely urban, so its rate is not directly comparable with states that include large rural areas, and mailing addresses near state lines can shift counts between neighbors. See the dental deserts map for all states with shortage-area data.
Specialties
| Primary specialty | Listings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| General Dentistry | 304,866 | 85.5% |
| Orthodontics | 21,119 | 5.9% |
| Endodontics | 9,398 | 2.6% |
| Periodontics | 8,787 | 2.5% |
| Prosthodontics | 4,724 | 1.3% |
| Pediatric Dentistry | 2,624 | 0.7% |
| Dental Public Health | 1,836 | 0.5% |
| Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery | 1,319 | 0.4% |
| Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology | 928 | 0.3% |
| Dental Anesthesiology | 593 | 0.2% |
| Orofacial Pain | 281 | 0.1% |
| Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology | 43 | 0.0% |
Primary taxonomy on the NPI record.
New dentists 2025–2026
NPIs first issued by year (our data stores the year only; 2026 is a partial year):
| Year | New NPIs |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 11,040 |
| 2017 | 9,762 |
| 2018 | 9,373 |
| 2019 | 9,588 |
| 2020 | 9,111 |
| 2021 | 9,966 |
| 2022 | 10,122 |
| 2023 | 12,022 |
| 2024 | 9,707 |
| 2025 | 9,208 |
| 2026 (partial) | 8,741 |
Most new NPIs, 2025–2026
- California – 2,468
- Florida – 1,572
- Texas – 1,522
- Illinois – 854
- Washington – 702
- Michigan – 676
- North Carolina – 666
- Pennsylvania – 578
- Massachusetts – 576
- Ohio – 551
Most new NPIs per 10,000 residents
- Washington – 0.88
- Massachusetts – 0.81
- District of Columbia – 0.74
- Nebraska – 0.71
- Florida – 0.67
A new NPI usually means a newly licensed dentist or a new practice entity, but it can also be a dentist who applied for an NPI late in their career. Records only count toward the state in their current mailing address.
Methodology and caveats
- Listings are not a workforce census. A listing is an NPI record with a dental taxonomy. It can belong to a dentist who is retired, works part time, or has several NPIs, and some listings are practices (organization NPIs) rather than people. We show individual-only rates alongside totals.
- Mailing address. NPI records are grouped by mailing address, which is not always where the dentist sees patients. Border areas and metro regions that span states can be over- or under-counted.
- HPSA counts are not comparable one-to-one. A state with many small facility or population designations can have a higher HPSA count than a state with a few very large geographic ones. "Residents in designated areas" adds the designation population of geographic and population-group HPSAs only (facility HPSAs such as health centers and prisons have no comparable population), and HRSA populations come from its own designation reviews, which happen at different times.
- State level only. Shortages are usually local; a state with a high average can still contain counties with very few dentists.
- Per-10,000 rates = listings ÷ population × 10,000. Data refresh: figures are recomputed from our database; the HRSA file is a snapshot.
Sources
- Dentist counts: listings on DentistsReviews.com built from the CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPI registry), dental provider taxonomies, grouped by the state in the record's mailing address.
- Population: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 population estimates (July 1, 2024).
- Dental shortage areas: HRSA Health Professional Shortage Areas – Dental Health data file (BCD_HPSA_FCT_DET_DH.csv, downloaded 2026-10-29), counting unique HPSA IDs with status "Designated". About shortage designations: HRSA Bureau of Health Workforce.