 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Savvy Entrepreneur. Today we'll be speaking with my very good friend, Ashley Vaughn, who is the controller of Capital Medical Group in Bakersfield, California. She's going to discuss how COVID-19 crisis has impacted her office and the community. So Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what you do as a controller? Sure. Yeah, I think sometimes that means jack-of-all-trades, but I handle a lot of the financial reporting where it closely would be accountant to handle the bookkeeping. I do a little bit of the account payment and manage the financial resources of the office. And I'm also involved with some office management and HR issues. So yeah, I feel like it's hard to nail down. It would take me a long time to write out my full job description, but I do a little bit of everything with the office. You guys are just a small office. You guys are a giant facility. I mean, this isn't just like Joe Schmo's dentist office where there's a full practicing dentist. This is, you know, how many dentists do you guys have in your facility? Gosh, we have 19 dentists in our facility, 89 employees. Yeah, it's a big facility. I want to say we have 36 treatment operatories, but I might be getting that number wrong. It might be 34, but it's either 34 or 36 treatment operatories. We have four hygienists working every day of the week, seeing patients. So we're open seven days a week. So yeah, it's a big operation. And you're one of the top three largest practitioners in the area, right? Oh, absolutely. In the area, we are the largest single private practice. So how are you guys attacking this COVID situation? And can you tell me about what you guys are doing to make sure that your employees are taken care of in this difficult situation? Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, we did have to lay off about 90% of the staff. We were able to luckily maintain the benefit, the medical dental vision, entire benefit package of all staff, even the ones that are currently in a layoff period. And with the staff that's remaining, we have gone above and beyond. We're constantly monitoring recommendations for personal protective equipment. And so we've been able to obtain N95 masks for the staff that are remaining. And we're trying to keep everyone who's still in the building, which is very limited as safe as possible. Of the nine doctors in our practice, there are four of them still working, and they're working two to three days a week each. So when before March, we were open seven days a week and had four providers in the office every day and four hygienists. And now we are open five days a week for about six hours a day and have two doctors working, seeing emergency only patients. And so unfortunately, every day we open our office, even with our skeleton staff, we're running at a loss. You know, there's still the supply costs associated, the remaining staff costs, and we're not really able, for everyone's protection, of course, to do anything that would generate the revenue we needed, even to break even. So yeah, it's been a very difficult time for the business. For the audience that aren't familiar with how menacing works and how billable codes work, can you give an example of two procedures and how they're completely different in terms of what you guys receive in terms of compensation? Sure, absolutely. Are you looking for two procedures? You know, one that might be an emergency procedure and one that's an emergency procedure? Okay, so if you needed to have a crown done, for example, the billable code for that's a 2740 or 2790, and that has a fee associated with it, ranging somewhere between $800 and $1,100, depending on your insurance company and the type of crown that you need. A limited exam, which is the treatment most people are getting at this time, is about $75 billable, could be less, again depending on the insurance company. And something like an open in med, which is used to treat an infection in a tooth and get somebody out of pain without doing the full root canal post and crown that they would need, that's going to run $100 or less per patient. Unfortunately, even though the patient needs, you know, the root canal and the crown, eventually, in order to do that type of procedure, we would have to use air. And when you're blowing air in someone's mouth, you're aerosolizing saliva. And so that's something that we try to avoid when at all possible. And oftentimes in open in med, we'll get someone out of pain and hold them over for the next five, six weeks, however long this process takes. So most patients that are coming through our office, you're seeing a billable amount of $150 or less for everybody. Well, so that's 10% of what you're usually seeing in terms of billable codes. That's a huge hit on your business. Of course. And again, we are not even able to see as many patients as our facility has capacity for. That would be dangerous to have, you know, a congregation of that many people in the building. And so although the demand is high, we have a lot of patients calling us that are in pain, and we're trying to get the men as quickly as we can. Doctors are only seeing one patient at a time. Patients are waiting in their car until they can be seen. We've closed the waiting room for everyone's safety. We've spread the two doctors that are remaining on the totally opposite sides of the building, and they're only working out of one chair each. So not only is it, you know, less money you're seeing per patient, but additionally from a business standpoint, you're seeing, gosh, I mean, 5% of the patients used to have come to the building in a day. And even though, you know, we're one of the last offices open, and so we've gotten a lot of calls for two fakes, we can't. We couldn't even allow all those people to come through our office in one day for safety reasons. That's really scary, thinking about the fact that if you guys are forced to close, where would people receive their treatments? I don't know. I mean, I do know that there are patients coming from surrounding areas because they're not able to find dental care in their area. There is, from what I hear, you know, other practices that are open on a very limited basis. You know, if you get in touch with your doctor, he might meet you at the office for very limited treatment. But yeah, if we're not able to keep our doors open, that's a big concern for us is being able to stay open for the community because we are one of the last holdouts, at least in our area. You guys are really doing great work. Now, luckily, the government has some programs that are meant to help businesses like yours. Can you talk to me about the procedure which you have to do in order to apply to the programs that you apply to? Yeah, absolutely. So early last week, I submitted our application for the SBA Disaster Relief Loan. The PPP Loan program, their application opened on Friday. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get our application in until Monday. But I applied for both loans. Just in case, for some reason, there was a problem getting one or the other. I know that you cannot take funding on both loans, but I put in both applications just to be prepared to go either way with that. The SBA Disaster Relief Loan is incredibly easy to apply for. I'm not sure if you've talked to anyone who's gone through that process. It's online, a very, very short process. Not a lot of intimacy to it at all. The PPP Loan program was a little bit different, of course. What did you need from the PPP program? Well, there's the regular loan information that you would need for any loan. On top of that, you need a detailed payroll data on every individual employee. Unfortunately, our payroll program didn't break the data down in exactly the way the loan wanted it broken down, so it was a manual process, which you have to have the information for any employee that you've paid in the past 12 months. And so if we have 89 employees now at the time that this started, I mean, we did have natural turnover. We don't have a lot of turnover at our organization, which is fortunate. But with natural turnover being what it is, I need a detailed payroll information on about 106 people. They have you break the payroll down, you know, what types of wages they're getting, bonuses, etc. In addition to that, you'll need all of your corporate documents, so incorporation documents, etc., when you did our DBA. They ask for bank account statements. They ask for the prior year's tax return. Oh gosh, now this is Monday. At seven days later, I'm trying to remember everything that that they require, but it was certainly far more important than I've needed for other loans. And it was just additional documents on top of what you would expect for a normal loan process. Now, I know you've done kind of research on these programs. What kind of new news have you heard about the funds that are hopefully going to be distributed to you? Well, actually, I've been a little bit surprised by that. Early this week, I had the understanding, and there's been several articles posted early in the week about some concerns about the funding. From the very beginning, they made it clear that this was a first come first serve loan program, and they were providing $350 billion in these PPP loans. Several different outlets have published articles indicating that $350 billion based on how they know businesses have been affected and the needs of small businesses today would not be enough. They did stress that it was first come first serve, which caused a lot of people to make a mad dash. Early in the week, Wells Fargo and Bank of America both reported that based on the information that they had, and the applications they'd already received by Monday, their available loan funds were exhausted. I don't know if there's been a response yet from the federal government on whether there would be any expansion of that so that more people could get the help that they need. I know that banks have continued to take applications, and there's just basically, from my understanding, not been any new information on how that's going to be handled from here on out. Yeah, I have the same experience. The banks that I use for my businesses, they sent me initial information, and then 24 hours later I got another email saying, oops, that was wrong, and then 24 hours later I got the new information, and I'm just waiting to see whether tomorrow they're going to send me another email saying, oops, that was wrong too. Yeah, yeah. No, it's frustrating. Initially, I went through our corporate bank to submit the initial request, probably similar to what you're talking about, just expressing a desire to apply for the loan. And still, had I continued to use that same organization, I would not have been able to apply for the loan because I, as of yet, have not been contacted to submit the actual application. But we ended up using a different company to get everything pushed through. Luckily, you have that connection and be able to get your accountant to help you with the application. Yeah, like I said earlier, our accountant's been an amazing resource, so I hope that all small business owners are reaching out to their accountants to see if they can also be a good resource to them, finding out where to go to get these things done. Speaking of tips like talking to your accountant, do you have any other tips for small businesses in doing this arduous process? Well, I mean, I would say, of course, start the process as soon as you can. If you're not making traction with your bank or the bank that you're trying to use, know that business owners are able to get their applications in. I was able to get my application in on Monday, so it might be time to look to other resources and maybe using other banking institutions if possible, but get everything done as quickly as you can. And if you go online, you can easily find the documentation that's required for the PPP loans. And I think that that's something, like in your case, you're waiting for your bank to contact you to get all of that data in, I would have it all together because it does seem at this point like this is a time of the essence right now on a first come first serve loan situation. Yeah, I've talked to a lot of business owners who haven't even really done any research yet because it's such a new program and they're so underwater with all the other things that are coming at them at this moment. So I really do hope that the government extends this and makes this a more robust program because, you know, if the money was exhausted 24 or 48 hours after the program started, that obviously means there's some of the funds, right? Right. And I know that in that article, Bank of America had indicated, you know, our loan funds are exhausted as of Friday. So we've looked to the government for guidance and I expect that that guidance will come. They've made it clear that you can apply for a PPP loan all the way up until June 30th. If truly, two days, two business days into the process, it was a done deal. I mean, obviously, that's just not going to work. So I think we are going to see some changes and some expansions and some modifications and everything. You just have to take it on a day by day basis. But definitely my advice would be regardless of hoping for that to happen. I would get the loan application in right now. If you haven't done it yet, do it right now. Great advice. And on top of it, by putting those documents together, you will have a better and easier time filing your taxes. So it's a tutor. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And I will say, the way that they had me break down the payroll data, which is not a way that we currently break it down, it was very informative. So it was an eye-opening process as well. But I'm just glad that the application's behind me. I actually did hear from the bank today. And it looks like our funding is secure. Congratulations. Yes, very exciting. Now it's just a matter of when you actually see that funding hit the account. I don't know. And they don't know. So we'll see moving forward how that works. So they don't have the funds yet? Well, I think that the banks must have the funds for loans that they've secured funding on a loan as soon as they have the funds. And I'm not a banker. But I do think that there is still so much information as far as regulations that banks are waiting on from the federal government that until they have it all put together, you're not going to see those funds released. But until that's all hammered out, I mean, I don't think I'll see funding coming through. But I do know that other small businesses have already received their PPP funds. So yeah, it's possible. Well, that's very encouraging to hear that some businesses have received their funds. And, you know, I'm very glad to hear that you were able to get your funds because you guys are doing such great work for the community. And I think that if any business should be getting those kinds of funds, it's the businesses like yours that are doing such great things to help people in dire need. Well, thank you. Yeah, I think that everyone at my office has been really focused on patient care during this time and just taking care of the community. So that's been a positive thing that's come out of all of this. You see that everywhere you look, I guess nowadays. Thank you, Ashley. That was very informative. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of these things with our audience. It's very informative. And I hope that if you're a business owner and you're watching this, you take the initiative to apply to these programs and take Ashley's advice where you prepare all your documents ahead of time. Even if your bank isn't taking applications yet, be prepared and apply as soon as you can. Thank you and stay savvy.