Barbara Durr

School’s 25 percent decline in enrollment over 5 years has led to shortfall; chancellor says academic offerings will be assessed

“Airbnb” rentals now outnumber hotel rooms, Tourism Development Authority reports

More than half of the patients seeking abortion care at Asheville’s Planned Parenthood clinic are now coming from out of state, as nearby states move to ban or restrict the procedure in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

The flagship Mission Hospital provided a level of care that helped put Asheville on national lists as one of the top places to retire. As recently as 2018, for the sixth time in the previous seven years, Mission Health was named one of the nation’s Top 15 Health Systems by IBM Watson Health.But also in 2018, in a surprise decision, Mission’s board of directors voted to sell the successful nonprofit to HCA Healthcare — the largest for-profit hospital chain in the U.S., with a reputation for cost-cutting and skimping on staff. Soon after taking over, HCA raised prices across the board, and complaints about staffing and quality of care began rising as well. Many retirees and former patients said they were angered and disillusioned.Some local residents, including those who spent their careers in medicine, are now traveling to other cities or even other states for their health care.

After profit-focused HCA Healthcare took over nonprofit Mission Health in 2019, management cut positions from housekeeping to food service. Now, an overburdened nursing staff often has to change soiled linens and empty trash — while the number of patients each nurse is assigned to care for each shift has sometimes doubled.Asheville Watchdog examined dozens of formal complaints filed by registered nurses with their union alleging unsafe conditions at Mission in the past 10 months. The forms, along with interviews with current and former nurses, paint a picture of a hospital that was once highly regarded and a source of community pride, but that has degenerated, the nurses said, into a punishing workplace, where staffing reductions and shortages have diminished the quality of care.