The Vermeil Clinic, owned and operated by Adventist Health St. Helena, closed its doors last Friday after nearly three decades providing healthcare services in Calistoga.
An Adventist Health spokesperson told the Tribune this week that the decision to close the 913 Washington St. clinic was made so the healthcare company could “enhance” its efficiencies and “consolidate” its efforts.
“As a result, we have decided to relocate the services offered at our Calistoga Clinic to our alternate locations in Napa Valley,” Tony Albright, marketing and communications manager for Adventist Health St. Helena said in an email. “This move allows us to standardize and improve the care we provide to all our patients.”
Albright declined to provide the number of patients the Calistoga Vermeil Clinic had been providing care to at the time of the closure.
“We understand the importance of maintaining community-based services in Calistoga,” Albright said. “We are currently working with two well-known organizations to bring valuable programming to serve the residents of Calistoga at the former Vermeil Clinic location.”
He added that he was not at liberty to disclose the names of the two organizations involved in those ongoing conversations.
The Calistoga clinic had offered various medical services over the years that have included adult and pediatric medicine, checkups and physicals, immunizations and flu shots, blood work and lab testing, as well as disease screenings and basic gynecological care.
Dr. Jeanette Williams was the clinic’s primary physician for eight years but in 2017, according to a Tribune story, was notified by Adventist Health of its plans to transfer the clinic to Napa Valley healthcare nonprofit OLE Health so that it could expand its medical and dental services.
But by early 2018, Adventist Health’s plan to transfer the medical office to OLE fell through and in a statement released at the time, the agency cited “regulatory restrictions” that prevented the transfer from taking place.
OLE Health, now named CommuniCare+OLE, operates its Calistoga in a double-wide modular unit at 911 Washington St., next door to the Vermeil House on property also owned by Adventist Health.
Earlier this year, CommuniCare+OLE Health began its own fundraising effort to build a new, expanded medical campus on three acres of land it purchased last summer near the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Silverado Trail. In June, the nonprofit announced that it had raised $4.1 million toward the project.
The Vermeil Clinic was closed for months in early 2018, following the botched plans. That June, Adventist Health announced it had hired a physician to hold part-time office hours there. That same year, Williams opened her own practice just down the street under a pay model known as “direct primary care,” which she still operates today.
A St. Helena Hospital spokesperson told the Tribune in 2008 that the hospital originally purchased the Vermeil House in the early 1990s and operated a clinic there for about five years. The hospital leased the property to family practitioner Dr. Andrew Alexander, along with Dr. Carlos Von Pohle, in 1998. According to Tribune reports at the time, Alexander announced in December 2007 that he was leaving his private practice, and the hospital again took over, hiring Dr. Beverly Benson in early 2008.
The old Victorian home in which the clinic has operated once belonged to Louie Vermeil and his wife, Alice – one of their four children is retired Hall of Fame NFL coach Dick Vermeil. In the 1930s, Louie Vermeil began operating his Owl Garage auto shop on the property, which has long been known simply as “the Vermeil House.”
The historic home, before being owned by the Vermeil family, was once owned by Calistoga pioneer Henry Fowler. It is also said to have been lived in at one time by then little-known writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny.
