What a difference a day makes.
Following a raucous and, at times, contentious meeting in Cashiers to kick off a series of community forums as laid out in the purchase agreement by Mission Health in its sale of Highlands Cashiers Hospital to HCA, the staff of Gibbins Advisors arrived in Highlands on Wednesday with their eyes wide open.
After learning from its mistake the previous night when the standing room only audience attending their forum in Cashiers, spent the majority of the next 90 minutes venting their grievances and demanding answers, Gibbins Advisors set some ground rules for the Highlands meeting.
“This is more a listening session than it is a Q and A,” said Gibbins Advisors Managing Director Tom Urban, a retired hospital CEO from Cincinnati. “There was a certain degree of frustration expressed Tuesday night. There is a lot of passion in the Cashiers community. They are very passionate about their quality of healthcare.”
Gibbins Advisors, a medical consulting firm, was hired by Mission Health to validate HCA Healthcare’s compliance with the agreement made when it acquired Asheville-based Mission Health nearly a year ago, and through Feb. 13, the advisor firm from Nashville, TN will travel to the last four of seven communities in western North Carolina.
“The principal reason we’re here is to engage the community,” said Gibbons Advisors Co-Founder Ron Winters. “We’re here to listen to you and to get your feedback about the sale of Highlands Cashiers Hospital by HCA. While we won’t be able to answer many of your questions, we want to hear your concerns. We will be able to channel all of the information back to HCA so they can address any of the concerns they haven’t heard from the community already.”
The tone of Wednesday’s meeting in Highlands proved to be a stark difference to its Tuesday, Jan. 28 predecessor in Cashiers. First, there was a quiet round of applause at both the beginning and ending of the 45-minute meeting.
Second, Mayor Patrick Taylor thanked Gibbons Advisors for their participation and presence in Highlands and said everybody in the Highlands community stands to benefit from this process.
“That community commitment is so important for us to have a viable healthcare delivery system in the Highlands-Cashiers plateau,” Taylor said. “That 10-year commitment is very important and I want to emphasize that not only is service important, but the quality of service is important.”
Taylor said he was really pleased with the NC Attorney General’s office for including the monitor in the purchase agreement.
“Everyone will benefit for us having this process in place,” he said. “I’m very excited you are going to be meeting with all the various stakeholders involved.”
While the commentary and rhetoric in the Highlands forum was subdued in comparison to the Cashiers forum, residents still expressed concerns regarding transparency by HCA moving forward, and there were legitimate questions of concern echoed here as there were in Cashiers. First and foremost among them dealt with adequate staffing.
“If they don’t do something to bring in the providers to provide the medical services there won’t be anyone seeking these services,” said retired physician George Miffleton, of Highlands. “The hospital won’t exist on just the revenues of Medicare and Medicaid. The economic engine up here is sputtering. It’s a ghost town over there and it’s really sad, and it looks like the hospital abandoned the community, rather than the community abandoning the hospital.”
“Something is going to have to take place before the people increase the support for this hospital,” Miffleton said.
Winters said his firm’s first report will come out in April following the seven community forum and other studies.
“One of the ways we will find out if there are compliance issues is it will come from feedback from the community,” he said. “Our job is to make sure HCA is in compliance with the conditions set forth in the purchase agreement with Mission. If HCA is not in compliance, the Attorney General has the authority to enforce the contract. I’m not going to be able to fix it for you, but I’ll be able to report it.”