Article · 8 October 2026 · 3 min
Who may do what? Capacity you already have.
Since the experiment with the ‘registered dental hygienist’ ended, a lot has to be put in writing again. KNMT and NVM, the dental hygienists’ association, are working on simpler agreements.
The quickest capacity gain in dental care is not in searching even harder for new people, but in properly arranging who may do what. And that is exactly where things are now getting stuck in paperwork: since the experiment with the ‘registered dental hygienist’ ended on 1 July 2025, agreements on reserved procedures (treatments that Dutch law reserves for certain professionals) have to be set out in detail again. KNMT, the Dutch dental association, and NVM-mondhygiënisten, the association of dental hygienists, are working on new agreements, but you can get your own division of tasks in order now.
What changed on 1 July 2025
The experiment with the ‘registered dental hygienist’ ended on 1 July 2025. The result: agreements on reserved procedures have to be drawn up and set out in detail again. Arrangements that worked well for many dentists and dental hygienists have been reversed.
KNMT wrote about this in August. Organising the cooperation between dentist and dental hygienist properly currently brings a lot of administrative burden, precisely around those reserved procedures.
Why this is a capacity problem
KNMT itself adds that the current arrangements sometimes get in the way of deploying people efficiently, while there are shortages across the board. That is the heart of it: you have people on your team who are allowed to carry out procedures, but the rules around them slow things down.
Research by the IGJ, the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate, also shows that the rules are not always followed, partly because it is unclear who is responsible for what. So unclear responsibility is not a side issue, but one of the reasons things go wrong in practice.
What is coming
KNMT and NVM-mondhygiënisten are now working together on new agreements on reserved procedures, which should make cooperation in practice considerably simpler. They hope to present them to their members before the end of the year.
What you can do now
Don’t wait for those new agreements to get your own division of tasks in order. Three questions are enough to start with:
- Who in your team carries out which procedure?
- On whose instruction does that happen?
- Is that recorded anywhere?
Anyone who has this clear now will be able to move the people already there around faster later on. And once the new agreements are in place, you only need to adjust instead of starting all over again.
To be clear: this is not legal advice. For the exact rules on reserved procedures, look to your professional association. Would you like someone to look at the division of tasks in your team with you? We are happy to help you think it through.
Sources
Questions about your own situation?
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