Dental Data Breaches Reported to HHS: Practices, Dental Groups and Insurers
Original analysis of 276 records from the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Oct 2009–Sep 2026 (submission dates). Published October 15, 2026.
We counted every report on the HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal filed by a dental practice, dental management group, dental insurer or dental benefits administrator, from the portal's start in 2009 through September 2026.
What the HHS breach reports show
Dental practices, dental management groups and dental insurers filed 276 breach reports with the HHS Office for Civil Rights from 2010 through September 2026, listing 45.7 million affected individuals. Dental insurers and benefit administrators filed 20 of those reports but account for 74% of the individuals. The count covers breaches affecting 500 or more people at organizations whose names identify them as dental.
- 276Dental breach reports to HHS, 2010–Sep 2026
- 45.7MIndividuals affected (sum of reports)
- 74%Share of individuals in insurer reports
Insurers: few reports, most of the people
Dental insurers and benefit administrators filed 20 reports (7.2% of the total) covering 33.9 million individuals, 74.2% of everyone listed. Dental practices and practice-management groups filed 253 reports covering 11.8 million.
Three reports make up two-thirds
The DentaQuest report of 2026 (15.0 million), Managed Care of North America (MCNA Dental, 2023, 8.6 million) and Delta Dental of California (2023, 7.1 million) together account for 67.2% of all individuals in dental reports.
Eight reports of a million or more
Of all dental reports, 8 listed one million or more individuals each: 4 from insurers and benefit administrators and 4 from dental management groups. Together they account for 90.0% of the total.
Hacking drives the numbers
Hacking/IT incidents make up 64.1% of dental reports and 98.9% of the individuals affected.
More reports, steady share
Dental organizations filed 114 reports in 2020–2024, against 42 in 2010–2014. Their share of all HHS breach reports did not rise: 3.5% in 2010–2014 and 3.2% in 2020–2024.
How Many Dental Data Breaches Are Reported Each Year
Dental breach reports rose with the overall number of reports on the HHS portal.
The most reports in a full calendar year came in 2024, with 30. In the first nine months of 2026, 31 reports were filed, listing 15.3 million individuals.
Through 2018, dental organizations filed 86 reports in total; from 2019 through September 2026 they filed 190. The whole portal grew at a similar pace, so the dental share of all reports was 3.5% in 2010–2014 and 3.2% in 2020–2024.
The number of affected individuals jumps in single years. In 2023, the MCNA Dental and Delta Dental of California reports lifted the total to 18.1 million; in 2026, the DentaQuest report alone lists 15.0 million. The year 2026 is incomplete and is not compared with full years.
Dental breach reports to HHS by submission year
- 20101164,679 individuals · 5.5% of all reports
- 2011762,739 individuals · 3.5% of all reports
- 20121259,936 individuals · 5.5% of all reports
- 2013952,770 individuals · 3.2% of all reports
- 2014318,710 individuals · 1.0% of all reports
- 2015945,667 individuals · 3.3% of all reports
- 20161247,346 individuals · 3.7% of all reports
- 201712167,618 individuals · 3.4% of all reports
- 201811124,995 individuals · 3.0% of all reports
- 2019253.6 million individuals · 4.9% of all reports
- 2020261.9 million individuals · 3.9% of all reports
- 2021232.9 million individuals · 3.2% of all reports
- 20221258,121 individuals · 1.7% of all reports
- 20232318.1 million individuals · 3.1% of all reports
- 2024301.4 million individuals · 4.0% of all reports
All years
- 2025201.8 million individuals · 2.5% of all reports
- 20263115.3 million individuals · 5.4% of all reports
Years are calendar years of submission to HHS, not the year the breach happened. The year 2026 covers January to September only.
Dental Insurers vs. Dental Practices: Who Reports the Biggest Breaches
Practices file most reports; insurers and benefit administrators account for most affected individuals.
Dental insurers and benefit administrators filed 20 reports covering 33.9 million individuals; practices and practice-management groups filed 253 covering 11.8 million.
A typical dental report is small: the median report lists about 4,373 individuals. Insurers and benefits administrators hold records for millions of members, so a single incident can reach a large share of the total. Managed Care of North America, which administers dental benefits under the MCNA Dental name, filed as a HIPAA business associate.
Dental management groups, also called dental service organizations, run billing and IT for many offices at once. Smile Brands, Dental Care Alliance, Great Expressions Dental Centers and Absolute Dental Group each filed a report of more than one million individuals.
Individuals affected by type of dental organization
- Dental insurers and benefit administrators33.9 million20 reports · 74.24% of individuals
- Dental practices and practice-management groups11.8 million253 reports · 25.73% of individuals
- Dental suppliers and clearinghouses11,5073 reports · 0.03% of individuals
The Largest Dental Data Breaches
The DentaQuest, MCNA Dental and Delta Dental of California reports lead the list.
The three largest reports together list 67.2% of all individuals in dental reports; the 8 reports of one million or more account for 90.0%.
The DentaQuest report submitted in July 2026 lists 15.0 million individuals, the largest dental report on the portal. HHS shows the count the organization gave when it reported, and such counts are sometimes revised later. Each report is a separate row, so one person can be counted in more than one report.
Practices named after an individual dentist are shown without the name in our CSV.
Largest dental breach reports to HHS
| Organization | Year | Affected |
|---|---|---|
| DentaQuest, LLC | 2026 | 15M |
| Managed Care of North America | 2023 | 8.63M |
| Delta Dental of California | 2023 | 7.06M |
| Dominion Dental Services, Inc., Dominion National Insurance Company, and Dominion Dental Services USA, Inc. | 2019 | 2.96M |
| Smile Brands, Inc. | 2021 | 2.59M |
| Great Expressions Dental Centers | 2023 | 1.93M |
| Dental Care Alliance, LLC | 2020 | 1.72M |
| Absolute Dental Group, LLC | 2025 | 1.22M |
| Risas Dental & Braces | 2024 | 618K |
| Sarrell Dental | 2019 | 364K |
All 25 largest reports
| Organization | Year | Affected |
|---|---|---|
| Knowles Smith & Associates, d/b/a Village Family Dental | 2024 | 240K |
| Fairfax Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery | 2023 | 236K |
| PDG, P.A. dba Park Dental | 2024 | 186K |
| CDHA Management, LLC and Spark DSO, LLC dba Chord Specialty Dental Partners | 2025 | 173K |
| Community Dental Care, Inc. | 2025 | 135K |
| Acadia Health, LLC d/b/a Just Kids Dental | 2023 | 129K |
| Arkansas Oral & Facial Surgery Center | 2017 | 128K |
| Delta Dental of Virginia | 2025 | 127K |
| Dental Group of Amarillo | 2024 | 110K |
| Dental Center of Northwest Ohio | 2018 | 85.9K |
| Howard University College of Dentistry | 2021 | 80.9K |
| Southeastern Minnesota Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery | 2019 | 80K |
| New Jersey Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery | 2024 | 74.4K |
| A-O-M-S, P.L.L.C. d/b/a Arkansas Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons | 2026 | 64.8K |
| Aspen Dental Management, Inc. | 2023 | 62.2K |
Which States Report the Most Dental Data Breaches
Dental breach reports came from organizations in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
Dental organizations in California filed 30 reports, the most of any state, followed by Texas with 26.
The state is the one HHS lists for the reporting organization. For insurers and national dental groups that is the headquarters, not where patients live: the DentaQuest report puts Massachusetts at the top by affected individuals, and the MCNA Dental report puts Georgia third. Counts are not adjusted for population or for the number of dental offices in each state.
Dental breach reports by state of the reporting organization
| State | Reports | Affected |
|---|---|---|
| CA | 30 | 9.78M |
| TX | 26 | 259K |
| PA | 22 | 868K |
| FL | 18 | 1.78M |
| MN | 12 | 460K |
| WA | 12 | 69.5K |
| VA | 10 | 3.37M |
| NC | 10 | 297K |
| OH | 10 | 163K |
| NY | 10 | 129K |
| OR | 10 | 33.6K |
| IN | 8 | 47.7K |
All states
| State | Reports | Affected |
|---|---|---|
| AZ | 7 | 53.8K |
| IL | 7 | 26.2K |
| MA | 6 | 15M |
| NV | 6 | 1.27M |
| AL | 6 | 548K |
| TN | 6 | 206K |
| WI | 6 | 20.3K |
| CT | 5 | 52.9K |
| MO | 5 | 24.6K |
| CO | 5 | 23.7K |
| GA | 4 | 8.63M |
| MI | 4 | 1.93M |
| NJ | 4 | 120K |
| SC | 3 | 61K |
| LA | 3 | 21.2K |
| MD | 3 | 11.4K |
| UT | 3 | 9.95K |
| AR | 2 | 193K |
| ID | 2 | 7.44K |
| ME | 2 | 3.42K |
| DC | 1 | 80.9K |
| HI | 1 | 45.9K |
| IA | 1 | 26.1K |
| NM | 1 | 3.68K |
| MS | 1 | 3.47K |
| AK | 1 | 2.01K |
| ND | 1 | 2K |
| RI | 1 | 1.56K |
| OK | 1 | 500 |
Download the Data and Cite This Study
Every table as a CSV file and in one Excel workbook, a short PDF summary and every chart as an image, free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0).
- Dental breach reports by segmentDental breach reports to HHS by type of dental organization, with individuals affected and the number of reports affecting one million or more people. · 3 rows · CSV, 1 KB
- Dental breach reports by segment and breach typeDental breach reports to HHS split into insurers, practices and suppliers and by HHS breach type, with each group's share of all individuals affected. · 13 rows · CSV, 1 KB
- Dental breach reports to HHS by stateDental breach reports (500+ individuals) by the state HHS lists for the reporting organization, with individuals affected. · 41 rows · CSV, 1 KB
- Dental breach reports to HHS by year of submissionDental breach reports (500+ individuals) per calendar year of submission to the HHS OCR portal, individuals affected, and the dental share of all portal reports; 2009 and 2026 are partial years. · 17 rows · CSV, 1 KB
- The 25 largest dental breach reports to HHSThe 25 dental breach reports with the most individuals affected, as reported to the HHS OCR portal; names of practices named after an individual dentist are withheld. · 25 rows · CSV, 4 KB
- All tables in one Excel workbookOne sheet per table plus an About sheet with sources, method and citation · Excel (.xlsx), 16 KB
- Summary to print or forward (3 pages)Short answer, key figures, main chart, findings, method and citation · PDF, 186 KB
Charts for your story
Dental breach reports to HHS by submission year
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Individuals affected by type of dental organization
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Largest dental breach reports to HHS
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Dental breach reports by state of the reporting organization
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How to cite
Goldberg, L. (2026). Dental Data Breaches — HHS OCR Breach Reports from Dental Practices, Dental Groups and Dental Insurers by Year, State and Segment (2010–2026) [Data set]. Settlement Insight. https://settlementinsight.com/research/dental-practice-data-breaches
BibTeX
@dataset{goldberg_2026_dental_practice_data_breaches,
author = {Goldberg, Leonard},
title = {Dental Data Breaches --- HHS OCR Breach Reports from Dental Practices, Dental Groups and Dental Insurers by Year, State and Segment (2010--2026)},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Settlement Insight},
url = {https://settlementinsight.com/research/dental-practice-data-breaches}
}How We Measured
Checked against published figures
- All breach reports affecting 500+ individuals submitted to the HHS OCR breach portal in calendar year 2023: published 746, our count 745 (0.13% apart).HHS OCR, Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information for Calendar Year 2023
Full method and limits of the data
HHS does not record a medical specialty, so a report counts as dental when the reporting organization's name (covered_entity) contains, case-insensitively, one of these strings: dental, dentist (including dentistry), orthodont, endodont, periodont, DDS, D.D.S, DMD, D.M.D, oral surg, maxillofacial (anywhere in the name, so "Oral, Maxillofacial & Implant Surgery" counts), oral & facial, oral facial, oral health (only as a separate word, so "Behavioral Health" does not count), smile, braces, teeth, or DentaQuest. The two oral & facial surgery centers in Arkansas and at Harborview and the Northern Virginia oral, maxillofacial and implant surgery practice are therefore included. We added Managed Care of North America, which runs dental Medicaid and CHIP benefits as MCNA Dental. We removed 5 reports whose names mention dental care only next to general medical services: the JHU/APL medical and dental plan, the Asarco health, dental and vision plans, North Hill Needham's employee dental plan, and the Lakewood and Olde Towne community clinics for medicine and dentistry. Every match was reviewed by hand.
Counts are reports as HHS lists them. In 2 cases the same incident was filed twice: Delta Dental of Illinois, where OCR's description says so, and Superior Dental Care, whose business associate filed on the same date with the same count; these count as reports but their individuals are counted once (the second filings are the Delta Dental of Illinois business-associate report and the Superior Dental Care Alliance report). Every other report, including Delta Dental of Illinois's separate 2019 report and same-day filings with different counts, is counted in full. Affected individuals are the sum of the counts HHS lists for each report. Insurers and benefit administrators are Delta Dental companies, DentaQuest, MCNA Dental, Dominion Dental, Dental Health Services, Superior Dental Care, Dental Select and an employer dental plan; Patterson Dental and the clearinghouse DentalXChange are grouped as suppliers; all other reports, including dental service organizations filing as business associates, are practices and practice-management groups. Breach types follow the HHS breach_type field; a report counts as hacking when that category appears in the field.
What this data cannot tell you
- The name filter misses dental organizations whose names carry none of the terms, and it cannot see dental benefits run inside general insurers or dental clinics inside hospitals and health systems. The totals are therefore a lower bound.
- The sum of affected individuals counts notifications, not unique people: one person can appear in several reports. HHS figures are the organization's own estimate at the time of reporting and are sometimes revised later; the DentaQuest figure is a round number as listed on the portal.
- HHS posts and updates reports after review, so reports submitted in recent months, including all of 2026, may still be added or changed. The partial year 2026 is shown separately and not compared with full years.
- Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals are reported to HHS once a year and are not published, so many small dental office incidents are not in these data. A report on the portal is not a finding that HIPAA was violated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many dental offices have had data breaches?
From 2010 through September 2026, dental practices and practice-management groups filed 253 breach reports affecting 500 or more individuals with HHS; with insurers and suppliers, the dental total is 276. Smaller breaches are not published.
How many patients were affected by dental data breaches?
The dental reports list 45.7 million affected individuals in total. The same person can be counted in more than one report, and the three largest reports account for 67.2% of the total.
How big was the DentaQuest data breach?
DentaQuest, LLC reported a hacking/IT incident affecting 15.0 million individuals to HHS in July 2026. It is the largest of the 276 dental reports on the portal; the figure is the one DentaQuest gave HHS and may be revised.
How many people were affected by the Delta Dental data breach?
Delta Dental of California reported a breach affecting 7.1 million individuals to HHS in 2023, the third-largest dental report. Other Delta Dental companies in Illinois, Virginia, Washington and Arizona filed smaller reports.
Are dental data breaches increasing?
Dental organizations filed 114 reports in 2020–2024, against 42 in 2010–2014. Because all HHS breach reports grew at a similar pace, the dental share of all reports did not rise: 3.5% in 2010–2014 and 3.2% in 2020–2024.
Where can I see the list of dental data breaches?
The HHS Office for Civil Rights publishes all reported breaches affecting 500 or more individuals on its breach portal. Our CSV files summarize the dental subset by year, state, type of organization and largest report.
Sources
- Breach Portal: Notice to the Secretary of HHS Breach of Unsecured Protected Health Information — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights
- Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information for Calendar Year 2023 (archived copy) — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights
- Breach Notification Rule — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Independent analysis. Settlement Insight is not a law firm and not affiliated with any agency named here. Analysis by Leonard Goldberg, Editor. How we work: methodology, our data.
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