ASHEVILLE – A coalition of local chosen officials, doctors, nurses, clergymen and others urgently urgently insist on HCA Healthcare to increase the personnel level in the Mission Hospital in Asheville or to sell the hospital to a non -profit health system.
The question comes from a patient death that took place in a bathroom in the Emergency Department in February. The group, Reclaim Healthcare WNC, is of the opinion that death could be prevented if the hospital had made more staff work when death took place.
The Citizen Times reported earlier that one missionary staff had ended after an internal investigation, which is underway.
Members of Reclaim Healthcare WNC listened during a press conference of the organization on 28 February 2025. The group consists of chosen officials, doctors, nurses and others. They call for more staff in the Mission Hospital, more information about recent dead in the hospital and to HCA to sell the hospital to a non -profit owner.
The group, which was formed in 2024, also calls on HCA to release more information about what he thought was to prevent another patient death that reportedly took place in January on Mission.
“We need answers from HCA about the relationship between these deaths and staff of the patient and how they will prevent this in the future,” said Senator Julie Mayfield at a press conference on 28 February Reclaim Healthcare WNC in the center of Asheville.
A spokesperson for the Mission Health did not respond to questions from the Citizen Times with regard to the allegations and requirements of Reclaim Healthcare WNC.
A 'calculated decision'
Mayfield said that HCA makes a “calculated decision daily to increase the profit by jeopardizing our families and neighbors.”
The claim of Mayfield is also in the center of lawsuits and other complaints that have been submitted against HCA, the health system established in Nashville that bought former non-profit mission for $ 1.5 billion in 2019.
Mission Hospital Emergency Department Nurse and Union Member Ashley Bunting spoke during the WNC press conference of Reclaim Healthcare on 28 February 2025. The group consists of chosen officials, doctors, nurses and others. They call for more staff in the Mission Hospital, more information about recent dead in the hospital and to HCA to sell the hospital to a non -profit owner.
In 2023, when he served as the attorney general of North Carolina, Nu-Gov. Josh Stein has brought a lawsuit in which he claimed that HCA has violated its purchase agreement for assets by terminating certain aspects of the oncology services of the mission and emergency and trauma friend, without the permission of the hospital's advisory board. The complaint highlights a shortage of staff and long waiting times on the Mission Hospital Emergency Department, a “manufactured” bed deficit and the consequences of medical transport services, which reports Citizen Times.
HCA is also confronted with a federal lawsuit filed by Buncombe County who claims that cutbacks have increased the waiting times of the hospital so much the waiting times that EMS employees are forced to treat patients in ambulances, waiting rooms of the mission and er -Gallways, they can accompany them.
At the press conference of 28 February, Riceville Volunteer Fire Department Tom Kelly has exercised similar concerns and claims that his team and the patients dealing with it are confronted for longer waiting times because of staff shortages in the mission.
Both suits are still ongoing.
In January 2024, the Citizen Times reported that the State Researchers have identified various incidents with an “immediate danger” in the Mission Hospital, can assign the most serious shortcomers and lead to loss of Medicare and Medicaid payments to a hospital.
According to a letter in which the shortcomings are explained, government officials discovered that hospital staff in the hospital did not quickly accept and followed in patients of emergency department, which led to delays in healthcare and prevented nurses from identifying and responding to changes in patients' disorders. The letter also indicated that staff shortages led to delays in the treatment of patients.
Residents of Asheville are in the lines outside the first aid at Mission Health after Tropical Storm Helene hit the region.
“The cumulative effects of these practices resulted in an unsafe environment for ED patients,” the letter was.
A federal report later obtained by the Citizen Times showed that missteps in the hospital led to several deaths by patients.
Corrections made by Mission ended the immediate Jeopardy status on 28 February 2024.
“I have seen firsthand that the hospital is able to manage our hospital in the right way,” said Ashley Bunting, a registered nurse who works in the Emergency Department of the mission during the WNC press conference for recovering health care. “When she lost their Medicare and Medicaid compensation last year, we suddenly got the resources.”
But the changes did not last, said Bunting, and claimed that the hospital “slipped back to the same circumstances where we fought so hard to come out.”
Those terrible circumstances were visible this week, when the emergency department aimed at the hospital full of patients on stretchers, Bunting said.
“HCA has completely ignored our warnings,” she said. “We have pronounced, we called for action and they have chosen not to do anything. And when nurses are ignored, patients suffer. '
More: Mission Hospital employee fired after the patient dies in there; Research ongoing
More: HCA's Mission Health closes the only long -term acute care hospital in WNC
Jacob Biba is the Helene Recovery reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. E -mail him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: After Death, Healthcare Coalition Pressing Mission to Up Staffing
