“Patients suffer when nurses are ignored: 'The alliance requires HCA to add staff after mission death
Asheville – A coalition of local elected officials, doctors, nurses, clergy and more who urge HCA Healthcare to improve staffing at Asheville Mission Hospital or sell hospitals to nonprofit health systems.
The demand is high heels for patients who died in the emergency room bathroom in February. The organization Reclaim Healthcare WNC believes that death can be prevented if the hospital has more staff working when the death occurs.
The Citizen Times previously reported that a mission officer had been terminated after an internal investigation.
Members of Reclaim Healthcare WNC listened at the organization’s press conference on February 28, 2025. The organization consists of elected officials, doctors, nurses and others. They called for increased staffing at Mission Hospital, more information on recent deaths in the hospital, and the sale of the hospital to nonprofit owners.
The group, founded in 2024, also called on the HCA to release more information about what it says is another preventable patient death, allegedly taking place in Mission in January.
State Senator Julie Mayfield, in a February 28 press conference, we need HCA’s answers on the connection between these patients’ deaths and people and how they will make that connection in the future. ”
A Mission Health spokesperson did not answer questions from the Citizen Times about the revocation of the Healthcare WNC.
A “calculation decision”
Mayfield said the HCA is making “determined decisions made daily to increase its profits by understaffing and putting our families and neighbors at risk.”
Mayfield’s claim is also against the Center for Litigation and other complaints for the Nashville-based health system HCA, which acquired the former nonprofit for $1.5 billion in 2019.
Missionary Hospital Emergency Room Nurse and Union member Ashley Bunting spoke at a Reclaim Healthcare WNC press conference on February 28, 2025. The group consists of elected officials, doctors, nurses, etc. They called for increased staffing at Mission Hospital, more information on recent deaths in the hospital, and the sale of the hospital to nonprofit owners.
In 2023, when he served as North Carolina's attorney general, he is now Goff. Josh Stein filed a lawsuit alleging that HCA violated its asset purchase agreement, which suspended certain aspects of Mission oncology services and emergency and trauma services without authorization from the hospital’s advisory board. The complaint highlights the shortage of staff and prolonged waiting times in mission hospital emergency rooms, which are the consequences of “manufacturing” bed shortages and medical transport services, citing the Citizen Times report as evidence.
The HCA also faces a federal lawsuit filed by Buncombe County, alleging that layoffs have increased emergency room waiting time in hospitals, so much so that county EMS workers are forced to treat patients in ambulances, mission waiting rooms and ER corridors until the mission is acceptable.
In a February 28 press conference, Tom Kelly, head of the Riceville Volunteer Fire Department, raised similar concerns, claiming that his team and the patients he treated face extended waiting times due to staff shortages on the task.
These two suits continue.
In January 2024, the Citizen Times reported that state investigators identified several “immediately dangerous” incidents at missionary hospitals that the most serious defect regulators can allocate and could lead to Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals.
According to a letter outlining the defects, state officials found that hospital caregivers did not quickly accept and monitor emergency department patients, resulting in delays in care and prevent nurses from identifying and responding to changes in patient status. The letter also indicated that personnel defects resulted in delays in patient treatment.
Asheville residents lined up outside the emergency room in Mission Health after tropical storm Helene hit the area.
“The cumulative impact of these practices creates an unsafe environment for ED patients,” the letter reads.
A federal report later obtained by the Citizen Times showed that hospital errors resulted in multiple deaths in patients.
The corrections made to the mission ended the immediate dangerous state of February 28, 2024.
“I have witnessed first-hand that the hospital is able to properly equip our hospital,” Ashley Bunting, a registered nurse working in the Mission Emergency Room, said at a Reclaim Healthcare WNC press conference. “Last year, when they were in danger of losing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, we suddenly got the resources.”
But the changes did not continue, claiming that the hospital “was back to the same conditions we struggled with.”
These serious conditions were evident this week when the hospital’s emergency room corridors were packed with stretcher patients.
“HCA completely ignores our warning,” she said. “We have been calling for action and they choose to do nothing. When nurses are ignored, patients suffer.”
More: Mission hospital staff were fired after the death of the patient; ongoing investigation
More: HCA's Mission Health closes WNC's only long-term emergency hospital
Jacob Biba is Helene Recovery Reporter of Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today network. Send him an email via jbiba@citizenimes.com.
This article originally appeared in Asheville Citizen Times: After the Emergency Room Death, Healthcare Coalition’s urgent task to improve staffing
