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Mission Health names new CMO

Dr. Philip Stahel was formerly the Chief Medical Officer of The Medical Center of Aurora in Colorado.
Courtesy of Mission Health
Dr. Philip Stahel was formerly the Chief Medical Officer of The Medical Center of Aurora in Colorado.

Mission Health has hired a new Chief Medical Officer for the HCA Healthcare North Carolina Division.

Dr. Philip Stahel, formerly of The Medical Center of Aurora, will start in April. Stahel is a triple-board certified European trauma surgeon, recruited to Denver Health in 2006 from Charité University Medical Center in Berlin, Germany.

“Dr. Stahel has been nationally recognized for his leadership in patient safety initiatives and we welcome his passion for quality care,” said Greg Lowe, President, HCA North Carolina Division.

Previously Stahel served as CMO at North Suburban Medical Center in Colorado. He was a professor of orthopedics and neurosurgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine is the founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Patient Safety in Surgery magazine, according to a press release.

Dr. William Hathaway left the CMO position in January 2022. He has moved over to another Asheville role: CEO of Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC). He started the role in February.

Hathaway served as CMO starting in 2013 and continued on after Mission Health was purchased by HCA Health in February 2019.

2021 was a turbulent year for the Mission Health system, marked by the pandemic and nursing shortages – including the most recent omicron spike.

Nurses at Mission Hospital have continued to voice concerns about staffing shortages, and patients have filed complaints about quality of care.

There is also still a class action lawsuit against HCA Healthcare.

Lilly Knoepp is Senior Regional Reporter for Blue Ridge Public Radio. She has served as BPR’s first fulltime reporter covering Western North Carolina since 2018. She is from Franklin, NC. She returns to WNC after serving as the assistant editor of Women@Forbes and digital producer of the Forbes podcast network. She holds a master’s degree in international journalism from the City University of New York and earned a double major from UNC-Chapel Hill in religious studies and political science.