Advocacy group State Employees Association of North Carolina, or SEANC, is calling on the state's Department of Human Health and Services to deny Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare's Asheville, N.C.-based Mission Hospital expansion.
"We have serious concerns that HCA’s profit-driven approach to care extends to its staffing decisions and that the applicant will not have the necessary staffing resources to accommodate its proposed bed expansion," the employees association said in an Aug. 1 filed complaint, according to a news release shared with Becker's.
Members of SEANC also spoke out at a public hearing after the city of Asheville and Buncombe County, N.C. filed a joint class-action lawsuit against HCA Healthcare, alleging anti-competitive practices.
"State employees already suffer from the secrecy hospitals are allowed to have about what they charge the State Health Plan," SEANC Executive Director Ardis Watkins said in the release. "Allowing HCA to have a situation further enabling a monopoly would likely make these costs even higher for state employees and the taxpayers they serve, while compromising quality of care."
"Mission Health appreciates all those who came out in support of us at the CON hearing and the many letters of support of our CON application," Nancy Lindell, a spokesperson for Mission Health, said in a statement shared with Becker's. "We are confident the NC Department of Health and Human Services will evaluate our application based on the state’s most recent Medical Facilities Plan and allow Mission Hospital to increase its ICU and MedSurg beds to better serve the communities’ growing need for complex and specialty care in Western North Carolina."
Ms. Lindell also said the allegations made by SEANC are false and unsupported.
HCA controls 85 percent of Asheville, N.C.'s acute care market, according to the employees association release.