Dentists per resident in Northern Virginia

By Shield Dental Care · Published November 12, 2026 · NPI data as of November 2, 2026

How many dentists, for how many people

Dentists who bill health plans electronically must have a National Provider Identifier (NPI), and most dentists have one. The federal registry of those numbers lists each dentist's practice address. We counted the active records with a dentist taxonomy at their main practice address in each Northern Virginia county and city, here meaning Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park, and divided by the number of residents.

Active individual NPI records with a dentist taxonomy, counted at their primary practice address, per 100,000 residents. Sources: CMS NPPES NPI file (November 2026); Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year population.

Dentists and residents by county and city, Northern Virginia

“General dentistry first” is the share of records whose primary taxonomy is general practice or dentist with no specialty. Virginia includes 26 records whose address could not be placed in a county. United States = 50 states and DC. Download the table for all 133 Virginia counties and cities as a CSV.

What the count shows

• Fairfax County is well supplied by this measure. 1,383 dentist records for 1,147,837 residents is 120.5 per 100,000, 15th highest of Virginia's 133 counties and cities.
• Small cities with many offices top the list. The cities of Fairfax (427.6) and Falls Church (407.9) are small cities surrounded by Fairfax County, so their dental offices serve many people who live outside the city limits. Manassas Park, at 35.7, has 6 dentist records for 16,798 residents.
• Most dentists list general dentistry first. 77.5% of Fairfax County's records name general practice or no specialty; 311 name a specialty first, including 63 pediatric dentists and 81 orthodontists.
• The registry counts more dentists than are working. On the American Dental Association's count of professionally active dentists, Virginia had 65.2 per 100,000 in 2025 and the United States 60.0. Our registry figure for Virginia is 30.5% higher, because the registry keeps dentists who have retired, moved or cut back unless they close their record.

Fairfax County dentists by the specialty listed first

Burke and Springfield

The five ZIP codes whose mailing city is Burke or Springfield had 185 dentist records between them, 122.4 per 100,000 residents.

Burke and Springfield ZIP codes

Dentists by the ZIP code of their practice address; residents of the matching ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ACS 2020-2024). People cross ZIP lines to see a dentist, so a ZIP with many offices serves more than its own residents.

Dental shortage areas

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) designates dental Health Professional Shortage Areas where too few dentists serve an area, a population group or a facility. In HRSA's data downloaded November 12, 2026:

• No geographic shortage areas. No part of Northern Virginia is designated a geographic dental shortage area. Across Virginia, 42 of 166 current dental designations are geographic.
• One low-income population designation. “LI - Fairfax/Alexandria/Arlington Junction,” designated March 3, 2026, covers low-income residents of 8 census tracts in Fairfax County, 12 in Arlington and 10 in Alexandria. None of those tracts lies in the Burke or Springfield ZIP codes.
• Community health centers. In the region, 3 federally qualified health centers carry facility designations, including Neighborhood Health in Fairfax County.
• Two older designations are on the way out. HRSA has proposed withdrawing two earlier low-income designations in the same area, “LI - Fairfax/Alexandria/Arlington Junction-Dental” and “LI-Alexandria-Arlington (Arlandria)”.

What this means for families in Burke and Springfield

• You have plenty of dental offices nearby. The Burke and Springfield ZIP codes alone hold 185 dentist records, and Fairfax County is not a dental shortage area.
• Specialists practice in the county too. Fairfax County's records include 63 pediatric dentists and 81 orthodontists.
• A listing does not mean an open appointment. The registry counts dentists, not open schedules or which insurance they take. Calling ahead is the only way to know.
• Check any dentist's license. Our guide to choosing a dentist in Springfield explains how to look up a Virginia dental license.

Method

We downloaded the CMS NPPES full NPI file dated November 2, 2026 (1,130 MB) on November 12, 2026 and kept every active NPI held by an individual with any dentist taxonomy (code group 1223, which covers general dentists and all dental specialties, not hygienists or dental therapists). Each dentist is counted once, at the primary practice location in the file. To place Virginia addresses in the right county or city we ran them through the Census Bureau's geocoder: 92.8% matched to an address point; the rest were placed by the county that holds most of their ZIP code's land, and 26 could not be placed and count only toward Virginia. Population is the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimate. Specialty groups use the primary taxonomy on each record, or its first dentist taxonomy when the primary one is not a dental code. In Fairfax County that applies to 8 records, among them 6 of the 52 oral and maxillofacial surgery records, which list an oral surgeon's physician code, an oral surgery clinic code or a training-program code first. Shortage areas come from HRSA's dental Health Professional Shortage Area detail file; the comparison figures come from the ADA Health Policy Institute's workbook. The scripts and summary counts are kept with the site's source code; no dentist or practice is named.

Sources

• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, NPPES Downloadable File (full replacement file, November 2026). download.cms.gov/nppes
• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, table B01003. api.census.gov
• U.S. Census Bureau, Geocoder (address batch). geocoding.geo.census.gov
• U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 ZCTA relationship files. census.gov relationship files
• HRSA, Health Professional Shortage Areas: Dental Health. data.hrsa.gov
• ADA Health Policy Institute, Supply of Dentists in the U.S.: 2001-2025, and Dentist Workforce. ada.org

Limits

• The NPI registry is not a count of working dentists. Records stay active until a dentist closes them, and addresses can be out of date, so these figures are an upper bound.
• A dentist who works at several offices is counted once, at the main address, and part-time dentists count the same as full-time.
• Per-resident figures for small cities and single ZIP codes mostly reflect where offices cluster, not how many dentists the residents can reach.
• The ADA notes about its own figures: “Data for 2023 to 2025 should be interpreted with caution due to changes in data maintenance methods that are still in progress.”
• This is a summary of public data, not advice about any dentist or practice.

Cite this study

Shield Dental Care. “Dentists per resident in Northern Virginia.” Published November 12, 2026. Data: CMS NPPES NPI file, November 2026; Census Bureau ACS 2020-2024; HRSA; ADA Health Policy Institute. https://shielddentalcare.com/research/dentists-per-capita-northern-virginia/

The table is free to reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license with a link to this page: download the CSV (143 rows: every Virginia county and city, Northern Virginia, Virginia, the United States, the five ZIP codes and the ADA comparison figures).