Posts published in “Healthcare”

Nashville-based HCA Healthcare, which operates Asheville’s Mission Hospital and five other hospitals in Western North Carolina, reported Friday that it made $2.27 billion in profits in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, triple the amount in the same period last year.

The record earnings coincided with the summer surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant. HCA said COVID patients accounted for 13 percent of all admissions to the chain’s 183 hospitals during the period.

Shares of HCA’s stock have also tripled in price since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic more than 20 months ago, creating a financial bonanza for investors and company executives. HCA is the largest employer in Asheville.

Samuel N. Hazen, HCA’s chief executive officer, credited the company’s record profit margins to a “disciplined operating culture.” He said HCA was on track to use its cash to buy back $8 billion in company stock in 2021.

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Two long-time members of the Transylvania Regional Hospital board of directors resigned Monday, saying they were “embarrassed” to have supported the sale of the Mission Health System to giant HCA Healthcare and that they now fear for the future of the Brevard-based community hospital under HCA’s profit-driven management.

In an open letter to The Transylvania Times, the board members, Parker Platt and Mark Weinstein, said they had been sidelined and rendered “powerless” and “voiceless” by the HCA-dominated board. “It is our hope that our resignations might have a more positive influence on the hospital’s future direction than if we remained on the board,” they wrote.

Asked by The Watchdog to comment on Platt’s and Weinstein’s resignations, a hospital spokeswoman said, “We thank them for their service.”

The resignations highlight growing community dissatisfaction with HCA’s operation of the 92-bed,

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[Editor’s Note: This story has been modified since its original publication. A correction and clarification was added at the bottom to explain the changes.]

Forrest Johnson fell in her garden on April 22 and broke her leg in two places. Her husband and stepdaughter rushed the 68-year-old former nurse to the Mission Hospital emergency room in Asheville from their home near Burnsville, about an hour’s drive. They arrived around 8 p.m.

Having spent 20 years in nursing, Johnson said, “I sort of knew what to expect.” But what she did not expect was that she would lie for nearly six hours in the emergency room without water, ice, a blanket, a pillow to elevate her leg, food, or pain medication. 

“I just had a very busy nurse,” Johnson said.

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They taught students in school, delivered the mail, advised Congress, and served the country in wartime and peace.

One led public affairs for NASA and became the voice of launch control for Apollo space missions. Another was a composer and pianist who played in the original Mickey Mouse Orchestra.

A year has passed since Buncombe County recorded its first Covid-19 death on March 28, 2020. Since then, another 300 people have died. In the official government record, they’ll be remembered as statistics of a pandemic that killed swiftly and indiscriminately, but to their families, friends and neighbors, they were so much more.

Asheville Watchdog combed public health reports, obituaries and death certificates listing Covid-19 as a cause of death to examine the virus’s march through Buncombe. The lives lost include the working and the retired, journalists and college professors,

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Years from now, the decision in 2018 by the directors of Mission Health to sell to HCA Healthcare might be seen as a brilliant strategic maneuver, one that guaranteed affordable, high-quality healthcare for future generations of western North Carolinians. This was, and still is, the position of the directors and executives who pushed the deal.

In return for giving up its independence, local control, and century-long legacy as a nonprofit providing quality care for the benefit of local residents, Mission accepted a $1.5 billion offer from HCA, the biggest hospital chain in the country. As a public company, HCA is required by law to prioritize profit-making for its shareholders.

The money from the sale was designated to fund a new nonprofit, the Asheville-based Dogwood Health Trust. Based on the relatively small population of the 18-county mountain region it serves, Dogwood overnight became not just the richest per capita health-related endowment in North Carolina,

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The news stunned Asheville and Western North Carolina, where Mission Health System Inc. was the area’s largest employer, its main healthcare provider, and a long-time source of civic pride. Seemingly out of the blue, Mission’s directors publicly announced on March 21, 2018, that they had voted to sell the 133-year-old nonprofit to HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, for an estimated $1.5 billion.

“To say that [Mission’s] announcement … was a surprise would be an understatement,” the Asheville Citizen Times observed in an editorial. “There has not been the slightest hint anything was afoot until Mission announced that its board had approved the deal unanimously.”

Coming Thursday: A smaller, less-profitable nonprofit hospital system in North Carolina sells for $2 billion, plus $3.1 billion in additional commitments — more than double what Mission negotiated with HCA. 

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This story has been updated to reflect the latest Covid-19 cases from the state.

Kathie Carnahan nursed her husband through two major surgeries, watched helplessly as dementia robbed the once vibrant attorney of the ability to speak, and made the gut-wrenching decision to place him in an Asheville nursing home.

But nothing compared to the pair of phone calls the family received two weeks ago from administrators at Aston Park Health Care Center. The first brought the news she had dreaded: Covid-19 had entered the nursing home. And then: her beloved Burt was infected.

“My heart sank, and I thought, ‘Oh god, it’s happening,’ ” she said. “It was the worst moment in my life.”

The coronavirus is surging through Aston Park,

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