ASHEVILLE – In a historic move, elected officials, doctors and others have formed a group with the goal of compelling the sale of Mission Health by HCA Healthcare, a for-profit company and the nation’s largest health care entity whose $1.9 billion purchase of the nonprofit Mission led to a serious decline in health care for Western North Carolina, said the group, Reclaim Healthcare WNC.
“We are giving voice to the people of this region who are disappointed and angry at the degradation in the quality of care being provided in the Mission system, and particularly at Mission Hospital,” N.C. state Sen. Julie Mayfield , a founder of the coalition, said in a statement released July 24. “We are also a voice for the physicians, nurses, and staff who work at or with Mission who are not able to speak out due to the culture of fear and retaliation that HCA has created.”
The Citizen Times reached out to Mission/HCA.
Since the 2019 purchase, HCA’s “systematic playbook-driven cuts” to staffing, services and resources along with a “rigid corporate culture” in search of profits undermined public trust and diminished a system that once provided best-in-class medical care, said a GoFundMe site that was online prior to the announcement.