Changes may be coming to your local dental office
So what does this really mean?
Instead of a dental hygienist cleaning your teeth, it could now be a dental assistant under this newly signed bill.
“I think more access sounds good, you know, and it can be good. It’s just we just have to be careful about are these people actually being supervised sufficiently to do the work that they’re doing, that they’re telling you – the patient – they can do,” said Matthew Ellingson.
Ellingson – CEO of Swiss Biologic Dentistry – is cautiously optimistic about a new law that will allow dental assistants to practice as oral preventative assistants (OPA).
Why you should care: This means they will legally be able to clean patients’ teeth rather than a dental hygienist.
“The benefits are there’s expanded care for more patients and maybe areas of the Valley that don’t have enough hygienists that work there. The negative part is the potential for some of these dentists to try to cheap labor because these assistants will be cheaper than paying a hygienist,” Ellingson said.
Under this new law, dental assistants will be required to take a training course involving 120 hours of clinical instruction with patients.
Source: Dental assistants allowed to perform duties of dental hygienists after passage of new law / FOX 10