Patient care and their oral health should be our number one concern.  By allowing dental assistants to perform our duties as dental hygienist would compromise patient care.  Dental asssistants are not qualified to probe and evaluate for periodontal disease, if this goes undected or untreated properly and only supragingival calculas is removed the  standard of care is then compromised.  Patients rely on hygienists to not only clean their teeth, but to educated them about their oral health as well.  There is a reason why hygienist must have a college degree and 15 hours of continuing education a year.  We provide services to patients that could help save their lives.