OLE Health Foundation on Saturday launched an $8 million capital campaign to build a new Calistoga campus and reached half of its goal in just one day.
At its annual Vida OLE! fundraising dinner and auction, the foundation raised $4.1 million for a new primary care hub that will be built on a vacant three-acre parcel on Lincoln Avenue that OLE purchased last year.
The planned 11,000-square-foot campus will comprise six medical and five dental exam rooms, open space for behavioral health and perinatal services and rooms for sterilizing equipment. Staff will also have a break room and allocated team space.
“This is an urgent need. Our upvalley communities are currently under-resourced in terms of medical professionals and facilities,” said Rick Jones, OLE Health Foundation treasurer and honorary capital campaign chair. “We need to take care of the people who are the backbone of our community; whether it be those in the vineyards and the wineries, the staff in our restaurants that we all enjoy, or the hotel employees. They all need to feel that this is a community that supports them.”
After nearly a decade of planning, the new upvalley campus will meet a crucial community need for primary care access north of Napa, according to a press release.
The new health center will provide services to all residents and workers in Napa County's upvalley communities, regardless of insurance or ability to pay.
Countywide, nearly 40,000 residents depend on OLE Health as their primary care provider. This includes patients at five health centers from Calistoga to American Canyon and those served by the Mobile Medicine team.
More than half of OLE’s patients have a household income of less than $53,000.
OLE has outgrown its facilities in Calistoga and St. Helena, which can no longer keep up with the demand for health services in the area, according to OLE Health. The clinic in Calistoga, for example, currently operates out of a 40-year-old modular unit on Washington Street where the supply closet is also the break room.
Both OLE Health clinics combined serve roughly 60 percent of the population north of Yountville. Waiting lists topped close to 100 patients in April, Alicia Hardy, CEO of Communicare+OLE, told the Tribune earlier this year.
In these communities, even individuals with private insurance and financial resources have limited options for primary care. OLE Health is the only healthcare provider in Napa County that accepts new Medi-Cal pediatric patients and Denti-Cal, according to their reports.
In Calistoga, medical staff alternate schedules to accommodate patients due to the constraints of operating out of what is essentially a double-wide trailer. Hardy noted that patients sometimes must travel to the Napa clinic for timelier services.
With the development of the Calistoga center, patients will have the opportunity to find care in the town they call home.
The nonprofit, which merged with CommuniCare Health Centers last October, has seven facilities across Napa County and the Fairfield-Suisun region of Solano County.
As a separate nonprofit, OLE Health Foundation’s mission is to raise money and build support for the work of CommuniCare+OLE in Napa County.
At last weekend’s auction, big-ticket items included a trip to Burgundy with Jean-Charles Boisset and a trip to Argentina with vintners Barry and Jennifer Waitte.
