Mission Hospital New ‘Immediate Jeopardy’ finding, CEO needs to answer
While our nation recently observed groundhog day, here in WNC, we are observing a more disturbing groundhog day: once again, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has made an Immediate Jeopardy finding for Mission Hospital.
Immediate Jeopardy is defined as “A situation in which the provider’s noncompliance with one or more requirements of participation has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment, or death …” It is the most severe censure a hospital can receive.
As another reminder, this is Mission’s second Immediate Jeopardy finding within four months, the third in two years, and the fourth in five years.
As with the previous Immediate Jeopardy findings, this one is based on patient deaths as well as actual and potential harm to patients.
The persistent problems at Mission that continuously lead to regulatory censure and to unsafe patient conditions are not normal and are not acceptable. The constant refrain we hear from the public is, “How can HCA get away with this? Who can fix it?”
CMS has regulatory authority to address these problems, and they have just increased the level of accountability by requiring HCA to hire a third party contractor, approved by CMS, to oversee HCA’s efforts to address the recent deficiencies. We applaud CMS for taking this next step.
I note that the staff, nurses, and physicians who work at Mission are working hard to care for patients. And we recognize that patients can and do receive excellent care at Mission. But serious problems clearly persist, and we lay blame for them squarely on HCA, which has created a system under enormous stress and continues to make daily decisions to understaff the hospital, putting patients at risk of injury and death.
In addition to CMS, there is another entity that can fix the problems at Mission: HCA. They have the resources to make whatever investments are needed — their stock price and net revenue hit all time highs last year — but they choose not to.
For years, local leaders have called on HCA to engage in constructive dialogue and to be more transparent and accountable. Unfortunately, local leadership has remained largely silent and we remain in the dark.
As a result, we are now elevating our call for dialogue, transparency, and accountability to HCA CEO Sam Hazen. Mr. Hazen, we publicly call on you, as the leader of HCA, to come to Asheville and meet with Reclaim Healthcare WNC and other community leaders. We ask that you be accountable to our community for your company’s decisions at Mission.
We call on you to tell us how HCA will permanently improve care and safety at Mission.
We call on you to tell us how HCA will prevent future preventable deaths.
We call on you to tell us how HCA will safely staff the hospital over the long term.
In short, we call on you to tell us how Mission is going to get off of this merry-go-round of enforcement and be a better steward of our community’s health and well-being. These ongoing problems are not good for any of us – patients, hospital employees, Mission, HCA, or the larger community.
While we are calling on you for answers, we are also calling you into dialogue about restoring and maintaining consistently high quality care for decades to come. Mission Hospital is a critical part of our region, and it simply must be managed to better meet our healthcare needs.
Mr. Hazen, when HCA bought Mission, you said: “We are excited that Mission Health chose to be part of the HCA Healthcare family. We look forward to investing in western North Carolina and ensuring Mission Health’s 133-year tradition of caring continues for years to come. This is a model partnership and one we hope will be replicated to benefit many similar communities.”
From our perspective, it has not been a model partnership and Mission Health’s tradition of caring has been severely tarnished. We hold out hope that WNC residents will someday again trust that they will receive consistently high quality care at Mission Hospital, but we need your leadership to get there.
What we propose will take work – work this community is prepared to do if we have a trustworthy, transparent, courageous, and committed partner in HCA. We invite you and other HCA leaders to that table, and we hope you will join us.
Julie Mayfield represents Asheville and Buncombe County in the NC state senate and is the board chair for Reclaim Healthcare WNC.
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