Mission Hospital faces scrutiny as officials limit public answers
State and federal officials have traded blame over Mission Hospital questions, even as the Asheville hospital faces its fourth Immediate Jeopardy sanction since 2019.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has stopped answering multiple questions about Mission Hospital, even as the Asheville facility remains under intense scrutiny and faces its fourth Immediate Jeopardy sanction since HCA Healthcare bought Mission Health in 2019.
That silence matters in Buncombe County because Mission Hospital at 509 Biltmore Avenue is still the region’s dominant acute-care provider. When answers about staffing, safety problems, complaints and oversight get harder to obtain, patients and families lose a clearer picture of the hospital they may have to use in an emergency.
NCDHHS said it had been directed by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to refer questions elsewhere because Mission was under federal jurisdiction. CMS later said it had not directed either NCDHHS or Mission Hospital to send all questions to CMS. That leaves a basic dispute over who told whom to stop talking publicly, and it has narrowed the information available to the public at a time when Mission’s record is already drawing close attention.
CMS defines Immediate Jeopardy as noncompliance that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment or death. Mission has now been placed in that category four times since 2019, in 2021, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The latest sanction cited two patient deaths, failure to isolate infectious diseases and an attack on a nurse.
One of the deaths involved Lucero Sierra, an 88-year-old woman whose death followed hip surgery in September 2025. Separate reporting said Sierra allegedly went 12 to 13 hours without a critically needed blood transfusion. Her daughters said her death was avoidable.
The dispute over public answers has also pushed the issue beyond the hospital and state regulators. U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents western North Carolina, has said he is drafting legislation to increase CMS oversight powers in response to Mission’s sanctions. Mission’s CMS certification record lists an initial certification date of June 9, 2016 and a re-certification date of January 29, 2025.
For Asheville and the rest of Buncombe County, the question is no longer only whether Mission can correct its safety problems. It is whether residents can still get straightforward answers about one of western North Carolina’s most important hospitals while those problems continue.
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