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Mission Hospital

Asheville

Beds: 730 | 2018 rank: 1 |
President: Jill Hoggard Green

Mission gained muscle after Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare completed its $1.5 billion purchase of the 12,000-employee system last month. HCA, a publicly traded company with 2018 revenue of $46.7 billion, plans to build a 120-bed behavioral health hospital in Asheville, replace the aging Angel Medical Center in Franklin, complete the build-out of a $400 million medical tower already under construction and invest $232 million in existing facilities. Mission, which covers the state’s 18 westernmost counties, spent more than $210 million in community investments in 2017; a foundation established as part of the HCA deal will support continued local outreach.

Challenge: Maintaining its prominence as one of the state’s top-performing hospitals could be a challenge for HCA, which has a reputation for stringent cost controls and, unlike not-for-profit Mission, must consider stockholder demands for robust earnings.

METHODOLOGY: Business North Carolina’s 2019 Best Hospitals list is calculated by the hospitals’ performance in 25 metrics, including information provided by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We examine patient-satisfaction surveys, rates of commonly acquired hospital infections, and readmission and death rates for common procedures. Also considered are safety report cards from The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, and ratings from insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield and U.S. News & World Report. We rank the state’s adult, acute-care medical centers with at least 50 beds, excluding specialty and psychiatric hospitals.

Click here to view the 2019 list of North Carolina’s Best Hospitals.