Mission Hospital has no plans to add staff in key areas – including trauma care, security, and nursing administration – as part of its recently approved, now-contested, 95-bed acute-care expansion, according to its application to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite conditional approval from NCDHHS to build its capacity up to 828 patients by 2031, a nearly 13 percent increase, Mission projects only a 3.7 percent growth in staff over the next seven years, according to the document reviewed by Asheville Watchdog.
Mission’s proposal added proportionally the fewest nurses per beds compared with fellow applicants AdventHealth Asheville, UNC Health West Medical Center and Novant Health. For registered nurses, Mission anticipates increasing the number of full-time equivalents – a commonly used measurement to standardize the number of employees by hours worked – by 8 percent, falling short of the growth in patient capacity…