By Peter H. Lewis & Barbara Durr & AVL Watchdog
• Dec 10, 2020
For a hospital system organized as a not-for-profit charity, Mission Health made a lot of profits.
The money left over after Asheville-based Mission subtracted its expenses from its revenue what would be called profit at a for-profit hospital grew year after year, right up to 2018, when Mission’s directors surprised nearly everyone by announcing plans to sell out to Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, the nation’s biggest chain of for-profit hospitals.
Mission at the time was as strong financially as it had ever been, which Mission’s executives said made it the perfect time to sell. They cited trends and studies suggesting that the Mission system faced a bleak future of relentless cost-cutting.
/
Rosalind Cornwell, standing, and Stefany Esparza, with Atrium Health’s Teammate Health, demonstrate an antibody testing session.
On Oct.7, the Greensboro-based Cone Health system had 57 COVID-19 patients across their small network of hospitals. A month later that number had almost doubled. A month after that, it was up to a total of 167.
And the numbers keep climbing.
“We’re doing this to ourselves,” Bruce Swords, the system’s chief medical executive, told his colleagues.
According to Doug Allred, the system spokesperson, medical leaders at Cone are frustrated, and they’re worried about having enough staff to handle what appears to be a continuing surge of patients.
Nonprofit Mission Made Lots of Profits Especially for Bosses
By Peter H. Lewis and Barbara Durr,
Asheville Watchdog
For a hospital system organized as a not-for-profit charity, Mission Health made a lot of profits.
The money left over after Asheville-based Mission subtracted its expenses from its revenue what would be called profit at a for-profit hospital grew year after year, right up to 2018, when Mission’s directors surprised nearly everyone by announcing plans to sell out to Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, the nation’s biggest chain of for-profit hospitals.
Mission at the time was as strong financially as it had ever been, which Mission’s executives said made it the perfect time to sell. They cited trends and studies suggesting that the Mission system faced a bleak future of relentless cost-cutting.
North Carolina will receive 85,800 doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine once federal regulators grant emergency authorization to distribute it, but after that, it's unclear how the state's mass vaccination plan will unfold, officials said Thursday.