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Officials with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have found Mission Hospital in compliance with its Plan of Correction after investigators detailed a long list of patient safety issues at the Asheville facility, a spokeswoman for the hospital's owner, HCA Healthcare, said Friday.
In a statement, HCA spokeswoman Nancy Lindell said CMS is recommending removal of the "immediate jeopardy" designation, the most serious warning a hospital can receive.
Mission had been in danger of losing its federal Medicare and Medicaid funding if the problems at the hospital were not resolved.
"We are pleased that the State surveyors found Mission Health to be in compliance with the corrective action plan previously accepted by CMS, and who are recommending removal of the immediate jeopardy," Lindell said. "We appreciate the expertise of all the surveyors present this week who took the time to thoroughly review our compliance."
Kelly Haight Connor, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed that state investigators had visited Mission Hospital this week and had left as of Friday afternoon. She directed questions on the "immediate jeopardy" designation to CMS, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HCA faced a deadline of Feb. 24 by which authorities would decide whether Mission Hospital was in compliance with the Plan of Correction.
"If you successfully remove the immediate jeopardy, you must continue with the accepted [Plan of Correction] focused on monitoring, additional training, auditing, and any other actions necessary to fully correct the noncompliance and ensure the noncompliance would not recur," CMS wrote in a letter to Mission CEO Chad Patrick earlier this month.
In a 384-page report released earlier this month,CMS detailed multiple patient safety issues including delayed treatment, failures to provide timely care and other errors that caused the hospital to face the "immediate jeopardy" designation. In some cases, the report said errors led to patient deaths.
Even if the "immediate jeopardy" designation is removed, HCA still faces a host of legal battles over conditions at Mission Hospital and other facilities. Among the lawsuits is one filed by North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in December, alleging that HCA violated the terms of its 2019 purchase agreement by failing to provide consistent, quality emergency and oncology care to patients.
On a Friday visit to the campus of A-B Tech in Asheville, Stein said that his lawsuit would continue regardless of the outcome of the CMS investigation.
“My lawsuit was filed, as you know, before CMS issued this letter and its findings,” Stein said. “And so, simply CMS taking a step back and saying that their concerns have been resolved does not answer my lawsuit.”
