Last updated: August 31, 2026
Primary public datasets
Our initial directory is designed around public healthcare location data from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). A public health center record does not automatically prove that dental care is offered at every site.
Visit the official HRSA data download catalog
The HRSA Health Center Service Delivery site file lists health center locations nationally with address, organization, site status and health center type. What it does not contain is a column stating which services each site provides. That absence is the central problem this directory had to solve, and it is why a health center appearing in the federal file is not by itself sufficient for us to publish it as a dental location.
CMS NPPES provider registry
The National Plan and Provider Enumeration System is the federal registry of health care providers holding a National Provider Identifier. Every registered provider records one or more taxonomy codes describing what kind of provider they are, against a specific practice address. Where a registration at an address carries a dental taxonomy — a general or specialist dentist, or a dental group practice — that is direct, address-level evidence that dental care is provided there, recorded by the provider themselves in a federal registry.
This is the source behind most listings here, and its limits are worth stating plainly. It establishes that dental care is provided at an address. It does not establish which treatments are offered, whether the practice accepts Medicaid or any particular plan, what the sliding fee scale works out to, or the opening hours. Registrations can also lag reality when a provider moves. We publish the narrow claim the registry supports and mark everything else unknown.
Look up any provider in the official NPI registry
Provider websites
Where a health center publishes its own website, we fetch the pages covering that specific location and look for statements about dental services, payment programs, sliding fee discounts and insurance participation. A statement is only recorded when it can be tied to the address in question rather than to the organization as a whole — a large health center commonly runs dental care at some of its sites and not others, so an organization-wide services page proves nothing about any individual address. Facts confirmed this way keep the exact sentence that supported them, the page URL and the date it was read. We hold those for review rather than print them: an excerpt is cut from a page by position and often begins mid-sentence, and a column of URLs beside a short listing reads as an audit trail rather than as help. Every listing links to the clinic’s own website where one exists, which is the same page we read.
UDS dental staffing data
HRSA’s Uniform Data System reports staffing and visit counts by health center organization, including dental services. We use it to decide which organizations are worth examining, never as evidence about a location: an organization reporting dental staff tells you the organization has a dental program somewhere, not that the site on the page in front of you is part of it.
Evidence rules
Four rules govern what appears on a clinic page. Unknown information stays unknown and is never converted into a negative or filled by inference. Organization-level activity is never presented as proof about a specific address. Claims about Medicaid, sliding fees, uninsured access or particular treatments require explicit evidence naming that location. And every published fact keeps its source type, source URL, confidence and verification date, which is why we would rather a listing said very little than said more than it can support.
The practical consequence is that most listings here confirm one thing — that dental care is provided at that address — and leave services, payment and hours marked as not confirmed. That is a deliberate choice. A directory that guesses the other fields would look more complete and would send people to clinics that cannot treat them.
Updates and corrections
Source data can change. Visitors should confirm information directly with providers and may report outdated information.