VIRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Virginians Can’t Wait for Dental Care 

Virginia is facing a critical shortage of dental hygienists across the Commonwealth, but especially in rural and underserved areas, resulting in long waits for routine care that prevents dental disease. Dental hygienists provide essential preventative care, and Virginia does not license enough hygienists to meet current patient, employer, and student demand. Dentists can supervise up to four hygienists in Virginia, but we have 1,500 more full-time-equivalent dentists than hygienists today in the Commonwealth. Virginia has one of the highest concentrations of dentists and the lowest concentrations of dental hygienists in the country. There are seven applicants for every available seat in a dental hygiene program. Virginians are waiting months for appointments—or worse, going without care. Without urgent and incremental action, this shortage will continue to jeopardize preventive care, early diagnosis, and the overall health of our communities. 

Annual licensure surveys from the Virginia Department of Health have laid out clear trends for Virginia’s dental workforce needs and the bottleneck of education programs that prevent dental professionals from advancing their ability to provide preventative dental hygiene services.

There are regional variances, but Virginia has one of the highest concentrations of general dentists in the country, and one of the lowest concentrations of dental hygienists. It is not due to a lack of interest, as every dental hygiene education program in the state has an rely on those measures alone, millions of Virginians will unnecessarily go without access to essential preventative dental care in the coming years. With that in mind, the VDA’s House of Delegates met in January 2025 and charged the VDA with pursuing options to increase pathways to the dental workforce, including an expedited pathway for internationally educated dentists to practice dental hygiene and allowing a pathway for experienced dental assistants to provide additional services in support of hygienists. The VDA has held extensive meetings with other states with existing laws in this vein and surveyed our members this spring to solicit additional feedback on the parameters they would support. extensive waitlist, turning away qualified applicants seeking to provide preventive dental care to their patients.

While twenty-one community colleges in Virginia offer nursing programs, only six are currently enrolling dental hygienists following the recent indefinite pause in admissions at Virginia Peninsula Community College. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projects that Virginia is more than 1000 hygienists short of where we need to be. The Greater Richmond and Northern Virginia areas, in particular, have an imbalance of dentists and hygienists. This leads to long wait times for patient care, too many dentists taking on duties previously assigned to other team members, and burnout in the dental team.

The VDA has been working with public and private schools to address the bottleneck for students. In the last few years, VCU and ODU have increased enrollment in their programs, and FORTIS College in Richmond has applied to CODA to establish a thirty-month program with the goal of thirty additional annual dental hygiene graduates a year.

The VDA and partners have had substantive meetings with three additional community colleges to help fill the gap in the funding barriers that are keeping them from sustaining, in the case of Virginia Peninsula, or in the case of Mountain Empire and Piedmont Virginia Community Colleges, establishing programs.

These are all important steps to meeting the long-term needs of our member dentists and their patients – and they will require funding to move forward. But if we rely on those measures alone, millions of Virginians will unnecessarily go without access to essential preventative dental care in the coming years. 

With that in mind, the VDA’s House of Delegates met in January 2025 and charged the VDA with pursuing options to increase pathways to the dental workforce, including an expedited pathway for internationally educated dentists to practice dental hygiene and allowing a pathway for experienced dental assistants to provide additional services in support of hygienists.

The VDA has held extensive meetings with other states with existing laws in this vein and surveyed our members this spring to solicit additional feedback on the parameters they would support. 

The Virginia Dental Association (VDA) proposes a strategic legislative initiative to Deliver, Develop, and Deploy resources where they’re needed most: 

Deliver Skilled International Providers to Provide Preventative Dental Care 

• Virginia can benefit from the talents of internationally educated dentists already living in our communities. Let’s remove outdated barriers and create a pathway to licensure for preventative care that upholds standards while tapping into this underused workforce. The legislation gives discretion to the Board of Dentistry to review credentials and includes completing examinations currently completed by hygienists. 
  

Develop the Role of Dental Assistants 

• Dental Assistants already have a pathway to train in expanded functions, otherwise limited to other members of the dental team, to help alleviate workforce shortages. Virginia’s key shortage today is in dental hygienists, and appropriately educated dental assistants can be permitted to provide support to a hygienist workforce experiencing critical shortages. Virginia can allow reciprocity for military preventative assistants by allowing those who meet federal requirements for limited scaling and polishing to do so. 
  

Deploy Budget Support to Alleviate the Education Bottleneck for Hygienists 

• We must invest to increase the number of seats available in dental hygiene education programs, which have comparatively high operating costs but provide a pathway to the highest-paying healthcare role available with a two-year college degree. With the right funding and incentives, we can fill vacancies faster, particularly in underserved regions. 
  

These initiatives are collectively an evidence-based workforce solution that meets the moment. With your support, we can make sure no Virginian is left waiting for a healthier smile. 

This legislative session, the VDA is carefully watching legislation and budget language that could impact our members and their patients.

We expect legislation to be introduced at the request of the Virginia Dental Hygienists’ Association (VDHA) that would enable some form of autonomous practice and create a separate regulatory body for hygienists. These autonomous models in other states have not demonstrated an increase in the number of patients able to access care or a sustainable financial model for autonomous practitioners. The ADHA already considers Virginia a “direct access state” due to our existing reasonable remote supervision laws.

With respect to creating a separate regulatory body for dental hygienists, the VDHA president has affirmed that he would seek to make a four-year degree the barrier to entry into the hygiene profession, while the ADHA adopted policy this year that would seek to establish the doctorate degree as the minimum entry level for dental hygiene practice. These policies, if enacted, would create substantial new financial barriers to entry into the hygiene profession and further exacerbate workforce shortages.

Governor Glenn Youngkin’s outgoing budget includes substantial cuts to the dental Medicaid budget, achieved by capping the annual limit for adult dental services at $2,000. For adults with advanced dental disease, this cap would result in delaying necessary dental care or forgoing dental care altogether. 

#1 - SIGN UP AS A VDA MEMBER ON-CALL

VDA leadership and our lobbying team have been consulting with senior lawmakers for the past year about these bills. Your presence as these bills are heard signals to legislators that their constituents care about these policies. As dentists, you are trusted community leaders, and we need to show up to successfully advance good policies. Sometimes committee hearings are held on short notice. Legislators value your expertise and personal experience, and we need dentists on call to show up this year to be successful. 

SIGN UP AS A VDA MEMBER ON-CALL

Note: Signing up to be on-call does not obligate you to show up or to cancel an appointment. We will notify you when opportunities to appear at VDA bill hearings arise in the coming weeks. Some of the key committees typically meet on Tuesday mornings, Tuesday afternoons, Thursday mornings, and Friday mornings at the General Assembly Building in Richmond.

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#2 - SIGN UP FOR VDA ADVOCACY TEXT ALERTS

Sign up to receive text messages regarding legislative activities during the 2026 General Assembly. Opt out anytime by replying to any message with STOP.

SIGN UP FOR TEXT ALERTS

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#3 - WATCH THE VDA TOWN HALL MEETING

The VDA government affairs team hosted a recent town hall meeting to walk through our upcoming legislative agenda and how members can be involved.

WATCH

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#4 - DIG DEEPER INTO WORKFORCE ISSUES WITH THE VDA PODCAST

Ryan Dunn, VDA CEO, and Paul Logan, the VDA’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, discuss the VDA's focused advocacy efforts in anticipation of the 2026 General Assembly. Specifically, they highlight a 'three-legged stool' approach: advocating for increased budget for dental workforce programs, creating an expedited licensure path for internationally trained dentists to practice hygiene, and introducing a preventative assistant role to alleviate workforce shortages. 

LISTEN NOW

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#5 READ BACKGROUND ON THE VDA'S LEGISLATIVE AGENDA

The January issue of the Virginia Dental Journal features background details on the VDA's 2026 legislative initiatives and insights on the impact in other states.

VIRGINIA’S DENTAL WORKFORCE SHORTAGE: A Three-Step Solution to Strengthen the Preventative Dental Workforce and Expand Access to Care - by Laura Givens

How Are Oral Preventive Assistants Impacting Access to Dental Care in Other States? - by Paul Logan