As a Registered Dental Hygienist for over 10 years I can confidently say I have never treated a patient over the age of 18 who had no subgingival calculus. The state is giving dentists and dental assistants permission to provide detrimental care to patients in the commonwealth by allowing dental assistants to scale supragingival calculus. One of two things will happen, either the assistant will follow the law and only scale the supragingival calculus leaving subgingival calculus below the gum line which will lead to gingivitis/periodontal disease OR the assistant will break the law on every patient and scale below the gum line and abuse the privileges given to the dental assistant from the state. This law doesn’t make sense and patients in the commonwealth are the ones who will suffer the most. If you want to improve the shortage of RDH’s, provide grants to universities to start more programs for qualified, licensed health care professionals. Lowering the standard is just giving dentists the opportunity to abuse their power because all hygienists know there is no such thing as an adult patient with absolutely no subgingival calculus.