BECKLEY — While many businesses have gone under or resorted to cutting valuable employees in order to avoid going bust, one Beckley-based business has enjoyed growth, success and was able to turn a profit in the midst of the nation’s woes.

Vaught Inc. was founded in 2008 by President and CEO Chris Vaught.

“The original intent of Vaught Inc. was a health care consulting service. The basic philosophy is that if someone comes to us with a problem, we will try to solve it, and if we are able to solve it, we are betting this has probably been a problem for someone else, too. If the solution is a good one, we will build a business around it and go from there. And that is what we have done,” Vaught explained.

The company just celebrated its three-year anniversary, and in those three years, a lot has been accomplished.

Vaught Inc. is the parent company of Night Watch, Med Matrix Solutions and V23.

Night Watch is the flagship company of Vaught Inc. Vaught describes it as an after-hours remote pharmacy service. He said the company got its start when Vaught was CEO for Summers County Appalachian Regional Hospital. He said someone approached him complaining that he or she had invested a lot of money into new technology for the pharmacy, but was unable to afford having a pharmacist working there 24/7.

“There are hospitals out there that do not have 24-hour pharmacy services and a lot of folks have invested a lot of money and technology to take care of the patients, but when the pharmacist goes home, they end up turning that technology off,” Vaught explained.

“We developed this program where we can actually interface with these hospitals. We have pharmacists that are located here in Beckley and throughout the country who work with these hospitals after hours. So once their pharmacist goes home, they continue to operate using our pharmacists.”

He said it is a heavily regulated, fairly competitive market, but the company is faring quite well. The company is operational in six states.

He said Med Matrix Solutions, a practice management and billing service specifically for medical providers, was developed after similar interactions.

“We love when we hear someone say, ‘I hate it when I have to ... .’ Just fill in the blank with something they need that is not being provided. We are all about trying to come up with a solution for that unmet need and, if the solution is good enough, building a business around it,” Vaught said.

The newest company, V23 was developed specifically to support the Element brand, the company’s medicine destruction system.

“We work very closely with Hospice of Southern West Virginia and what we saw there was a need to allow nurses associated with Hospice to destroy medication in patients’ homes more efficiently,” Vaught said. “Under current regulations, it is a quite cumbersome process so we worked with a chemical company and developed something that makes that much easier to do. 

“It is still in compliance for those regulations but allows the nurses to take the kit into the home, and be able to do their documentation and that destruction in a very efficient manner.”

Vaught explained that under the three companies Vaught owns are other service lines.

“These are baby companies and they are services that we are still developing but as they get bigger and they work, we are going to take them outside of that and eventually, they will become their own companies as well,” Vaught said.

Those service lines include Element, the medicine destruction system; Dreamtable, a software division; Hospice RX Network, a pharmacy benefits management program where Vaught Inc.  works with local pharmacies in medication management and contracts local nursing to local school systems; The Foundation, an internal product for the philanthropic part of the company; and Day Break, a day version of Night Watch.

In its three years of operations, Vaught Inc. has created close to 60 jobs in Beckley. Throughout the recession, when most companies were struggling, this company was founded, has thrived and is debt free, Vaught said.

Vaught attributes the success of the company to the demand for the services it provides, but says he hasn’t built this company alone.

“One of the things that I have been very lucky with here, is I make sure to surround myself with people who are a lot smarter than I am because I don’t know what I don’t know and that has  been great from a strategic perspective,” Vaught said. “We have been able to put the infrastructure in place that allows us to make these kinds of jumps and do it cost-effectively.”

Vaught said he wants to continue creating opportunities for the clients they serve. He said that he measures the company’s success by client satisfaction, the number of jobs they can create and an ever-expanding footprint.

“How big do we want to get? It all depends on how big our clients need us to be. This company is based on demand. We are a pay -as-you-go company so we want to make sure we are very fiscally responsible as we move, so with that being said, we are in no big hurry to overstretch ourselves.”

For more information call Daniel Keaton at 304-929-6909, ext. 1104, or visit www.vaughtinc.com

— E-mail: kvanpelt@register-herald.com