KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) — “I look at it a lot,” Staci Shroyer said.
She’s talking about a photo of herself, not too long ago, when she still had her teeth.
“I do miss my smile. It’s sad to go look in the mirror,” she said.
It started two years ago.
Shroyer had broken a tooth, and she was in pain but couldn’t get an appointment with her regular dentist. Then she found a clinic that could fit her in: Aspen Dental in Blue Springs, Missouri.
“I thought everything was legit,” Shroyer said.
She only wanted the broken tooth to be treated or fixed, but when she got to the clinic, she said the staff took a full set of dental X-rays.
They had bad news for her.
“They said, ‘they’re all rotten; they’re going bad; they all need root canals, and it’s going to cost you about $50,000,’” Shroyer told NewsNation affiliate WDAF.
She said she was shocked. She had recently seen two other dentists, and they never mentioned any problems or what the Aspen staff said was “periodontal disease.”
She said they told her it was just going be cheaper to get all of her teeth pulled and get dentures. They charmed her, she said, and told her she would look “beautiful.”
So she decided to go along with their recommendations.
Multiple states have sued Aspen Dental
Aspen Dental is one of the largest dental clinic chains in the United States with more than 1,000 locations across the country. There are about 10 locations in the Kansas City area. Local dentists treat the patients while Aspen corporate, known as a dental support organization, handles each location’s business and administrative needs.
For the past two decades, the corporation has caught the attention and concern of consumer protection attorneys and advocates.
“Big corporations like Aspen should not be involved in clinical decision making,” said Jim Baker, leader of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a corporate watchdog organization.
Regarding Aspen Dental, he said, “We’ve seen allegations of deceptive practices, maybe incentives to bill or steer patients toward more expensive procedures, things like dental implants, for example.”
Multiple states have sued the corporation over its business practices.
In 2010, the Pennsylvania attorney general won a settlement against Aspen Dental over misleading advertisements. In 2015, the New York state attorney general stopped Aspen Dental Management from dictating patient care to its clinics. That same year, the Indiana attorney general settled with the company over a charge of deceptive advertising. Most recently, in 2023 Massachusetts won a $3.5 million settlement with Aspen over bait-and-switch tactics used in some clinics.
In each of those settlements, Aspen did not admit any wrongdoing.
‘Pain for years’
The Office of the Kansas Attorney General received 25 complaints against Aspen Dental filed between 2018 and 2025. In Missouri, where there are three times as many Aspen Clinics, WDAF found 165 consumer complaints.
Tracy Merry went to an Aspen Dental clinic in Independence, Missouri.
Since then, she said, “I’ve been in pain for years.”
She paid more than $6,000 for dentures that she said don’t fit properly. She said the experience has changed her life.
She now keeps an anti-choking device on hand when she eats because she can’t chew properly.
“Yeah, I love steak,” she said, but now, “there’s no way. It hurts when your whole lifestyle changes and when everything you do has to be different.”
Shroyer ended up complaining to the Missouri attorney about her Aspen Dental experience.
She said that when the clinic pulled all of her teeth, she could feel the pain. After two years of visits, she said not only does the pain persist, but she, too, has dentures that don’t fit. She showed WDAF that they were so oversized, she couldn’t close her mouth.
WDAF also found open lawsuits against some of the Missouri locations. One accused a clinic of malpractice and claimed that a dentist unlicensed to work in Missouri pulled the plaintiff’s teeth. Other lawsuits accused locations of unnecessarily removing a patient’s teeth and causing ongoing health problems.
WDAF contacted Aspen Dental management at the corporation’s headquarters in Chicago for comment.
They provided the following statement: “Each Aspen Dental-branded practice is independently owned and operated by a licensed dentist who is responsible for patient care. ADMI takes patient concerns seriously and has established processes to review and address complaints when they are brought to our attention.”
As for some of the ongoing lawsuits, the company said, “Due to patient privacy considerations, we do not comment on specific allegations or pending litigation.”
Aspen also said it no longer has a “contractual relationship” with the dentist who is named as a defendant in several Kansas City area lawsuits. WDAF reached out to the Missouri attorneys representing that dentist, but didn’t hear back.
‘Wish I would have never walked into…that place’
One dental expert told WDAF that Aspen Dental’s practices and its outcomes, good and bad, are not unusual in other large dental organizations or chains.
“In a lot of these corporate practices, the protocols for dental care has been set by corporate – the time that is allowed for each cleaning, for every procedure and the fees,” said Dr. Mitchell Gardiner.
Gardiner has been a practicing dentist for nearly 50 years. He is a professor of dentistry and is also an expert witness who has worked for both patients and dental practices in civil malpractice suits.
WDAF sent him Shroyer’s teeth X-rays that were taken at the Aspen Dental in Blue Springs before the clinic pulled them.
“Looking at that particular full mouth series of X-rays and looking at all the jaw, bone, and looking at the teeth, in my mind, if that patient walked into my office, I would figure out a way to save a majority of her teeth,” he said.
WDAF asked another dentist for their opinion. They, too, said Shroyer could’ve had options. Dentures would’ve been the lowest maintenance option, but again, Shroyer said she never got properly fitting dentures.
“And when I saw it, and I found out that she lost all her teeth, the first words I said were, ‘I don’t know what happened here, but I’m not happy about the result,’” said Gardiner.
Aspen Dental refunded Shroyer for the cost of her dentures and implants but not for pulling her teeth. However, she claims that none of that information made it to the health credit card company that was financing her work. Eventually, she discovered that the remaining $2,500 was sent to collections.
Now, she said she can’t afford the work needed to get her smile back.
“I wish I would have never walked into the door of that place,” Shroyer said.
