“Ralph”

As a practicing cosmetic dentist, the governor’s mandated stay at home order as well as the ban of elective dental procedures has essentially closed our doors for routine care.

Throughout the peak of the crisis, we’ve remained available to our patients for emergency care to provide relief to those in need.

By providing emergency care, we effectively relieved the burden on emergency rooms who would have otherwise been forced to see our patients.

This somewhat essential role helped prevent unnecessary hospital utilization around the country.

From a business perspective, providing only emergency care isn’t financially lucrative.

Patch-and-go procedures rarely involve extensive effort and reimbursement tends to be minimal.

Simply put, emergency care doesn’t produce the quantity of procedures required to make ends meet in a dental office.

Our revenue during this limited care period was down 95%.

As a dentist struggling to make ends meet, I applied for and received the EIDL loan.

I also have applied for the PPP loan, which I have yet to be approved for.

I furloughed my staff and spoke to my landlord about rent deferral.

I also reached out to my vendors to reduce monthly subscription costs and other fixed expenses where I could.

Personal spending has been modified as well to reflect the change in income.

In Arizona, we are now open for business again with some residual minor restrictions on care.

Many patients are still reluctant to come in.

And some patients have lost their jobs as well as their dental insurance.

So, although the long term effect remains to be seen, the short term ramifications have been acutely damaging.

Enchanta Jenkins, MD, MHA, FACOG

www.ellehcalobgyn.com

I have been affected by covid19 stay at home orders.

I changed clinic hours to once weekly, negotiated with business bank to defer business loan and business credit card payments.

I happen to have more than one source of income which helped lessen the financial hit.

Also, due to no traveling we saved a lot of money.

Not eating out anymore also allowed us to save more funds.

My hospital job continues but I work less shifts to decrease exposure.

I have been able to manage the loss of income by decreased spending for all family members.

Rafael A Lugo MD FACS
OWNER/CEO at Lugo Surgical Group

www.DrLUGO.com

We have been impacted by the effects of COVID-19 and theeshelter in place and still continue to be.

Thankfully we had a plan to decrease overhead over the last few years and we have been able to weather some of the challenges present now.

With the economy also in demise, we see people holding up on needed procedures due to financial fears and also fear of Covid in the hospitals.

We are getting some government with help from Medicare and also ppp.

But the issue is what happens after 8 weeks???

It is hard to tell.

Our business cycle is such that we will see the impact three months after the closure.

We receive payments for services 30 to 90 days after , so we will see a hit then.