After three years of legal action, Mission Health and HCA Healthcare announced it has settled a federal antitrust lawsuit with two Western North Carolina counties and two cities.
The lawsuit came about after for-profit Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare purchased Mission Health System in 2019. The hospital system includes six regional hospitals across the region.
The lawsuit alleges that the hospital system had a monopoly on health care in the region which created an “anti-competitive” market in Asheville and across the region.
The lawsuit began with a filing from the city of Brevard in June 2022. The city said at the time that that HCA’s actions have harmed Brevard and its community by “making changes to charity care, performing and billing for unnecessary procedures, causing the loss of experienced and highly qualified physicians and other health care providers from the HCA system and reducing the availability of appointments for health care services.”
“Their predatory monopolistic practices are really hurting the ability of a community to get that affordable, available and high-quality healthcare,” Brevard mayor Maureen Copelof told BPR in 2022.
After individually filing lawsuits in August 2022, Buncombe County, Madison County, the City of Asheville, and City of Brevard consolidated their complaint against HCA. Some of the issues mentioned by Copelof were directly reflected in the deal.
The resolution of the lawsuit includes a $1 million donation by Mission Health to a new charity care fund.
The deal promises that Mission health will continue operation of Transylvania Regional Hospital for an additional three years. In the 2019 asset purchase agreement, HCA promised to continue to operate all of the facilities for 10 years (until 2029). This new deal would extend that timeline in Transylvania County.
Mission Health issued a press release on Aug. 13 saying that while this resolution was reached, the health care system denies “the allegations made against them by the plaintiffs.”
“Mission Health and HCA are glad to have this litigation resolved so that they can continue focusing on what we all agree matters most: providing quality healthcare to the residents of Western North Carolina,” the press release states.
The deal also commits Mission Health to “cooperate in the negotiation of space adequate for the provision of adult day care services in Brevard, North Carolina and to seek for Mission Hospital quality verification as a trauma center; and provides the Plaintiff municipalities and counties with additional information related to Mission Health advisory boards.”
