Dr. Valerie Hayes is the St Augustine Research Clinic Director covering St Johns, Flagler and Putnam Counties. Since 2019, she and her team have provided patients with compassionate health care that is not commonly experienced in most clinics.  Every patient is under the care of a team of multi-specialty physicians and highly trained staff who spend time listening to their patients and addressing their concerns.  Our patients become family and over 98% remain active patients in our research programs.

Around the office, Dr. Hayes is known as the French doctor! She came to the US to study at Mayo Clinic and never returned to Aix-en-Provence as planned. Despite the years, she still has kept a vibrant love for France. “You can take the girl out of her country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl” she says.

Outside of work, Dr. Hayes is a mixed martial arts Black Belt, trains with the St Augustine Dragon Boat Team and revels in peace and nature most of all.  She loves traveling with her family. In fact, Dr. Hayes recently hiked the whole country of Costa Rica with her husband and friends. “It was so beautiful in January, and I highly recommend it,” she says. “The natural beauty of the 12 Climate Zones of that country, the pristine fauna and flora embrace you and heal you thru and thru.”

Now that her children are in college, at the end of the long workday, Dr. Hayes enjoys her quiet drive in her EV and the company of audio books that take her on fascinating historic, scientific, and other discoveries which inspire her world adventures.