After an exhaustive search for a medical practice to occupy the Mad River Valley Health Center when Central Vermont Medical Center closes Mad River Valley Family Practice next month, the health center board reports that Dr. John Wilson will be opening a small concierge medical practice in a portion of the space.
Wilson’s new practice will open in October for a limited number of patients who subscribe. Details on patient numbers and costs are still being developed Wilson said.
CVMC announced the closure of the local medical practice last fall and is moving patients, providers, and most staff to Waterbury. The facility will close in late August and local patients will begin seeing providers in September in Waterbury.
Wilson worked closely with the board in its efforts to find a group to take over the local practice, taking the initiative to reach out to potential successors himself. He said he ran into dead end after dead end.
“There’s no one more upset by what has happened that me. For six years it’s been my pride and joy working here. I thought I’d retire from that health center under UVMC’s direction. This is not what I thought I’d do but it’s my last-ditch effort to keep some health care in The Valley,” Wilson said.
Mad River Valley Health Center board president Don Murray said that CVMC was supposed to have informed patients that Wilson would be leaving CVMC, but that did not happen.
“The members of the board, as well as Dr. Wilson, are well aware that his new practice is not the ideal solution for all residents of The Valley and that not all residents may be able to afford this new practice. Having exhausted all other alternatives, this seems to be the only option of keeping at least some form of primary care practice here in The Valley,” Murray wrote in an email.
He explained that Wilson would be paying the same rent per square foot as CVMC had, but was only renting a portion of the space. He, and board vice president Polly Bednash, expressed hope that given the additional space in the facility, they were hopeful that another type of practice might join Wilson, even though to date the board has had no luck in finding another such practice.
The board issued a lengthy statement detailing its efforts to find another practice to take over the local space and further details its frustrating interactions with CVMC and its parent UVMC. Each potential successor was able to review the practices financials, something that had been denied to the local board, local and state media and others who have sought them. That statement includes board efforts to work with the Green Mountain Care Board, state, and federal politicians.
“Most everyone would agree that keeping CVMC here at the clinic would have been the preferred result. However, after months of discussions with them, the Green Mountain Care Board, representatives from the governor’s office, Senator Sanders’ office, our state representatives, members of the board of trustees of UVM Health Network, and others, there is no realistic chance that CVMC will change its mind about the closure,” Murray explained in the board’s statement. Read the full statement on Page 15.
“We have tried to convince CVMC that providing at least some financial details would go a long way in improving the negative view many in The Valley currently have of CVMC, but they contend that they have provided the GMCB with all of the financial information it requested and that because some of that information is competitively sensitive, they were allowed to file that information under seal. Without this disclosure, it is impossible to determine what has changed so dramatically since Dr. Cook ran the practice here, apparently successfully,” Murray wrote for the board.
“In fact, CVMC purchased the practice from Dr. Cook, apparently thinking it was valuable enough to purchase. Less than 10 years have elapsed since that sale and CVMC is now telling us that the practice cannot be sustained. Despite our protestations, CVMC remains resolute in refusing to provide reasonable answers,” he added.
The local health center was built with a combination of grants, public and private donations, loans and sweat equity in the mid 2000s when Dr. Fran Cook’s practice was to be housed there along with other health care providers on the second floor. The practice was sold to CVMC in 2016 when Cook retired.
In a 2004 Q and A, printed in The Valley Reporter in February of that year, the health center board wrote:
"There has always been and will continue to be a sliding scale for private pay patients at the health center. It has been and will continue to be the policy of the Health Center to see and treat all patients, regardless of their financial status or insurance coverage."
It is not yet clear how a concierge medical practice meets those board dictates.
