Buncombe County seeks to join lawsuit against Mission Hospital
BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. (WSPA) – The Buncombe County government is asking to be added to a lawsuit against Mission Hospital and HCA Healthcare.
In December, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein filed a lawsuit against the hospital and HCA Healthcare, which bought Mission Hospital in 2018.
The suit said HCA violated its purchase agreement which required the hospital to maintain the level of services it had before the sale.
Lillian Govus, communications and public engagement director for Buncombe County, said the county is asking to join the lawsuit in an attempt to recoup money the county has spent paying EMTs – who are county employees – to work in the hospital’s emergency room.
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According to the county, wait times to transfer patients from EMTs to rooms in the ER have risen from just under 10 minutes in 2020 to just under 18 in 2023. 90th percentile times – the time in which 90% of EMS to ER transfers occur – more than doubled from around 16 minutes to more than 32 minutes, the county said.
The national standard for 90th percentile times is 20 minutes, Govus said.
While EMTs are waiting on those transfers to occur, they are often doing what Govus called “wall time,” waiting with patients or helping to clean rooms in the emergency department.
The county is asking for $3 million in damages to recoup the costs of having EMTs working in the ER and not out running calls in the community.
“For us the key part is these are taxpayer dollars that are being used to subsidize a for-profit hospital when our staff ware working in that hospital in lieu of ER staff,” said Govus. “It is our responsibility to recoup those dollars on behalf of tax payers in this situation.”
In a statement, Mission Health said: “We’ve received the motion, and we will continue to defend the lawsuit vigorously.”
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