Twelve years after buying a small, barely established practice up the street from her new home, Dr. Atty Smith has built Smith Dentalworks into a technology-forward, relationship-first office where patients say they don’t feel like a number.
Atty Smith DDS, Smith DentalWorks
When Dr. Atty Smith and her husband Rory left Minnesota winters behind for good, they weren’t chasing a job opening or a five-year plan. They were chasing family, sunshine, and a place to raise two daughters. “I think after a few winters, once you have the freedom to decide if you still want to keep living in the cold, we kind of looked at each other and thought, let’s maybe try something different,” Dr. Smith said. The West called, and after stops in Reno, Nevada, the road eventually led to Tucson, where Rory had family.
They picked Oro Valley before Dr. Smith had a job lined up. “We really liked the Oro Valley area, from the proximity to Tucson, yet kind of out of the town, quieter,” she said. “I could see my kids riding their bikes on the flatter streets, as opposed to the up-and-down foothills. It just had more of a family feel to me out here.” Soon after the family settled in, a small dental practice up the street came on the market. “It was definitely meant to be,” she said.
From a Couple of Hundred Patients to a Full Practice
That was 2014, twelve years ago this September. The office Dr. Smith bought had only been open for a couple of years, operating one or two days a week with a few hundred patients. She had previously owned a decades-old practice in Reno, so this was a different kind of challenge: building something from the ground up rather than stepping into an established rhythm.
Today, Smith Dentalworks’ office hours are about three and a half days a week, closed Mondays and open two to three Fridays a month. It’s a deliberately comfortable size for a single-dentist practice. “We’re in that nice, comfortable range,” she said, the kind that lets her keep the small practice feel she has always preferred. All of her practices, in Minnesota, Nevada, and now Arizona, have been private practices. “That’s kind of been the style of practice that I like to do,” she said.
Pain-Free Isn’t Just a Slogan
“Pain-free dentistry” sits front and center on the Smith Dentalworks website, and Dr. Smith is quick to explain where that came from. “My philosophy always has been trying to make coming to the dentist as easy as it can be, recognizing that sometimes we have to do uncomfortable things,” she said. The label itself crystallized around the time she introduced the Solea laser to her practice, six or seven years ago, before the pandemic.
The Solea is a hard-tissue, soft-tissue laser, one of only a handful of its kind used by dentists in the Tucson area. “I use it every day. I use it on a lot of fillings, with little to no numbing needed,” Dr. Smith said. “I was like, I’ll believe it when I see it in my own hands. Patients, outside of some cold feelings, are fine, and then they get to go on with their day without a frozen mouth.”
Her draw to technology goes back further than the laser. “Even in school, I was drawn to the latest technology. I think it just seemed interesting to me,” she said. Her first associateship reinforced that instinct. “I saw what it did for patients, and ever since then, I have tried to stay not just up to date, but on the cusp of trying. I’m certainly not the first to sign up for something, but I like to try new things. It keeps it interesting for me.”
Show and Tell, Not Just Tell
Dr. Smith has long believed that an educated patient makes the best decisions, and over the years, she’s refined how she puts that into practice. “I don’t just talk about procedures; I show them. It’s a lot of show and tell,” she said. New patient exams lean heavily on photography and a digital wellness scan that lets her and the patient look at the whole mouth together, moving images around to examine the bite and check for cavities. “It’s almost like we’re exploring this together and co-talking about what we’re seeing,” she said. “I think patients can make more of a connection when they see things, as opposed to just hearing me describe them.”
Making Prevention Affordable
Rising costs are a reality across dentistry, and Dr. Smith doesn’t sugarcoat it. Dental insurance reimbursement rates, she noted, have barely budged in years, even as the cost of materials and labor keeps climbing. Rather than compromise on care, she’s built a membership plan that bundles exams, cleanings, and X-rays into an accessible package, with discounts on fillings and crowns for members. “It’s prevention-focused,” she said. “If you’re coming in regularly, your needs are going to be smaller, because we can identify things earlier. For the patient, getting it done earlier will be more manageable than for someone who’s been away from a dental office for a decade. Their costs are going to be higher.”
What Sets the Practice Apart
Asked directly why a patient should choose Smith Dentalworks over another office in Oro Valley, Dr. Smith didn’t lead with technology or technique. “What really sets me apart is the time that I take to get to know you as a patient, more than just your mouth, and the time I take to explain things,” she said. “We all do great work. I think it comes down to relationships and helping patients feel comfortable. They’re not just a number here.”
That kind of small-practice feel, she pointed out, is increasingly rare as independent offices are acquired by private investment groups with no dentists on staff. “I think patients like this small style of practice that, unfortunately, is tending to go away,” she said. It’s also, she believes, the reason most new patients arrive through word of mouth rather than advertising. “If you’ve been here and you know what that experience is like, you’re going to go tell your friend, and that’s going to be better relayed than if you’re just looking at black-and-white costs.”
Looking Ahead
Dr. Smith keeps an eye on dental research that sounds like science fiction today, including efforts to use stem cells to regenerate teeth or regrow tooth structure damaged by decay, rather than filling it. “I don’t know that that’ll be in my career,” she said, with a laugh, “so we still may be looking at implants and crowns and bridges and fillings” for the foreseeable future.
For now, her advice to anyone in Oro Valley weighing where to go for dental care is to think less about the price of a cleaning and more about how they want to feel as they walk through the door. “Do you want to feel like a number, or do you want a co-collaboration on the health of your mouth, the look of it, the options you have?” she said. “That’s what you would get here. That relationship building, that care not just for your mouth, but your whole well-being.”
Smith Dentalworks is located at 1840 E Innovation Park Dr, Oro Valley, AZ 85755. The office is open Tuesday through Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and select Fridays, 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. For appointments, call (520) 505-4422 or visit smithdentalworks.com.
A Note from the Publisher
Dr. Smith has been the dentist for ILoveOV Publisher Michael Burns and his wife Annette for five years. We wanted to disclose that relationship up front. It’s also a big part of why we wanted to feature her practice this month: we don’t recommend lightly, and five years in her chair has earned our trust.
