ASHEVILLE – HCA Healthcare-owned Mission Health has permanently closed Asheville Specialty Hospital, its 34-bed long-term acute care facility, the health system said.
The hospital, which paused services after Tropical Storm Helene disrupted the City of Asheville’s water distribution system Sept. 27, was located inside Mission Health’s St. Joseph’s Campus. It was the only accredited LTACH in Western North Carolina and provided treatment for traumatic brain injuries, strokes and spinal cord injuries, as well as respiratory, cardiac and wound care.
Asheville Watchdog first reported the hospital’s closure.
In a Nov. 26 email, Mission Health spokesperson Nancy Lindell said the health system, in the wake of Helene, has been devoting its resources to “the most urgent medical needs of our community,” and staff have been caring for the facility’s patients at Mission Hospital. Permanent positions are available for all affected staff, Lindell said.
She added, patients who would have previously been admitted to the now-shuttered hospital will instead go to other long-term acute care, skilled nursing or inpatient rehabilitation facilities. Mission Health reopened its inpatient rehabilitation hospital, CarePartners, Nov. 21, Lindell said, and is admitting patients. CarePartners Solace, Mission’s hospice facility, has yet to reopen.
In response to the closure, state Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Democrat representing most of Buncombe County, said it’s “another in a long line of decisions that HCA has made that closed, or ceased, longstanding, important services in our community.”
One of the organizing members of Reclaim Healthcare WNC, a coalition of elected officials, doctors and others calling on HCA to sell Mission Health following its $1.5 billion acquisition of the nonprofit health system in 2019, Mayfield said the closure is also another example of how HCA makes decisions about the care it will provide without consulting the community and without having plan in place for people to access similar services.
HCA has been at the center of numerous lawsuits surrounding claims of inadequate care and other complaints. In 2023, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein sued HCA alleging the Nashville, Tennessee-based for-profit health system breached its asset purchase agreement by discontinuing certain aspects of Mission’s oncology services and emergency and trauma services, without authorization from the hospital’s advisory board.
In a Nov. 27 email, Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said the office is aware of the closure and is communicating with “stakeholders” in the region.
Mayfield said if HCA is unwilling to involve the community in its decision-making process, one option is to engage other healthcare providers extending their reach in the region.
AdventHealth, a Florida-based nonprofit health system, recently won approval to expand its new hospital under construction in Weaverville by 26 beds for a total of 93, beating out Novant Health and Mission Health, the Citizen Times previously reported. Novant, a Winston-Salem based nonprofit health system, has acquired three urgent care clinics and an imaging center and opened a surgical practice in November 2023. It’s also seeking to open a diagnostic center in South Asheville.
It may be time, Mayfield said, to have “a community conversation about how to get some of these needs met, as opposed to just being angry and frustrated that HCA is no longer providing them.”
More:State approves AdventHealth’s bid to expand new hospital in Weaverville by 26 beds
More:‘They didn’t leave:’ Mission’s ER director describes hectic, heroic work for Helene victims
Jacob Biba is the county watchdog reporter at the Asheville Citizen Times. Reach him at [email protected].
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