Now Dead, Nevada’s SB 495 Would Have Dismantled Dental Hygiene Standards
In a scathing guest editorial in the Nevada Globe, Scott Finley warns that Nevada’s SB 495 would let untrained assistants perform dental hygienist duties under the guise of innovation. He asserts the bill is backed by corporate interests and risks patient safety, professional integrity, and the future of quality dental care.
In a sharply worded opinion piece published in the Nevada Globe, Scott Finley lays out a compelling argument against Nevada’s Senate Bill 495, which he views as a direct assault on professional dental hygiene standards. Framed as a solution to the state’s dental workforce shortage, SB 495 would allow dentists to delegate restorative dental hygiene procedures to individuals without formal education or licensure.This shift, Finley argues, is not reform but deregulation wrapped in false promises of access and innovation.
The article traces the roots of this issue back to Assembly Bill 334, introduced in March 2025, which first attempted to grant expanded clinical duties to dental assistants. That proposal was quickly amended after facing fierce public opposition. However, Finley notes that the same concept returned with greater force just weeks later in the form of SB 495, a 100-page bill with dangerous implications hidden in Sections 77–79. These sections effectively allow dentists to assign hygienist-level tasks to minimally trained office staff, bypassing the educational safeguards designed to protect patients.
Finley is especially critical of the American Dental Association (ADA), which he accuses of siding with corporate lobbyists by endorsing SB 495 as a “creative” fix to staffing shortages. He compares the ADA’s support for the bill to “creative accounting,”a disingenuous workaround that, if implemented in finance, would be labeled fraud.
The article also highlights the rigorous training required to become a licensed dental hygienist in Nevada. Programs demand 2 years of science-heavy prerequisites, followed by 2 more years of intensive clinical and classroom instruction, totaling more than 200 hours of supervised clinical practice. Graduates must then pass three separate exams to qualify for licensure. In contrast, SB 495 proposes that a dentist could train any individual, without education or testing, to perform procedures that require deep anatomical knowledge, dexterity, and clinical judgment.
Finley points out that the hygienist shortage is largely limited to rural areas, yet SB 495 applies statewide. He views this as a veiled effort to cut labor costs in urban practices, allowing large corporate clinics to replace qualified professionals with low-paid, underqualified workers. This, he warns, could lead to a rise in preventable diseases and malpractice cases, harming patients and small practices alike. Click here to read the editorial.
