Following HCA Healthcare’s purchase of the Mission Health System, the nonprofit foundations that have supported Mission’s hospitals for so long had the choice to dissolve or find a new mission. 

As all of Mission’s legacy foundations establish their new mission and board of directors, Dogwood Health Trust is in the process of looking for the right person to lead the new private charity foundation.  

With the completion of Mission Health System’s sale of assets to HCA Healthcare, Dogwood Health Trust is now officially operating as a private, nonprofit foundation with the purpose of dramatically improving the health and wellbeing of all people and communities in Western North Carolina.

Those who were unhappy with the original terms of the proposed sale of Mission Health to a for-profit heathcare giant got some relief last week.

UnitedHealthCare and local Duke LifePoint affiliated hospitals have not yet worked out a new contract agreement, which could mean higher medical costs for UnitedHealth policyholders in 2019. 

Attorney General Josh Stein recently issued a press release discussing his ongoing review of HCA’s proposed $1.5 billion purchase of the nonprofit Mission Health system.

LifePoint Health and RCCH HealthCare Partners have completed their merger and will now begin operating as one united company under the LifePoint Health name. 

A press release issued by Haywood Regional Medical Center on Oct. 26 touted renovations to an existing facility that will provide better building utilization and expansion of patient care services, but that’s not the part of the statement that’s got some local residents upset. 

When retired teacher Villa Brewer went to get her mail Oct. 23, she returned with two interesting letters. One was from the N.C. State Health Plan, reminding her that Oct. 31 is the deadline to change her health insurance plan during open enrollment. The second was from Harris Regional Hospital, stating that the hospital’s current contract with UnitedHealthCare — of which Brewer is a member — will end Jan. 1 unless Harris can negotiate better reimbursement rates from the insurer. 

Worries last month over the potential defunding of local social service agency Mountain Projects’ Obamacare Navigator program became real when the organization wasn’t selected for funding, but a solution has now emerged thanks to one of North Carolina’s largest private trusts.