Answer Man: Can patients request ambulances take them to hospitals other than Mission?
ASHEVILLE – The federal government declared an Immediate Jeopardy designation at Mission Hospital, the most serious deficiency regulators can assign.
A bombshell report on the incidents that created the Immediate Jeopardy situation found that four patients died due to missteps at the hospital. Now some residents are wondering about their options if they have a health emergency and need to call 911.
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Question: With the problems at Asheville's Mission Hospital and the recent federal declaration that the hospital is in "immediate jeopardy", can citizens request that an ambulance take them to Arden Hospital or must Asheville residents be taken to Mission Hospital?
Answer: The answer is yes and no.
Buncombe County Emergency Services gives patients some choice about the hospitals in its EMS system, spokesperson Kassi Day told the Citizen Times Feb. 15.
Day said those hospitals include Mission, but also AdventHealth in Hendersonville and the Charles George Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, known to many as the “VA hospital.”
At the same time, Mission is the region’s only tertiary care center. It provides services that other smaller hospitals in the area simply cannot match, so there are certain conditions that require Buncombe EMS to transport patients to Mission, Day said.
Those conditions include “heart attacks, strokes, pediatrics, obstetrics, trauma, and burns. Additionally, any critically ill patient will be taken to the closest appropriate facility, most often Mission,” she said.
Buncombe EMS may transport patients to hospitals outside of the EMS system, like UNC Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville or Haywood Regional Medical Center in Clyde, Day said. That depends on the condition of the patient and the status of the EMS system at time of transport.
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Buncombe County EMS is not the only ambulance that may respond to patients in the county. Rural fire departments in the county also have ambulances for their respective geographies.
Fairview EMS Coordinator Landon Miller told the Citizen Times Feb. 16 that its emergency response system can choose from UNC Pardee, AdventHealth, Mission and the VA. He said that critically ill patients are typically good candidates for Mission because of the hospital’s level of service, echoing Buncombe’s policy.
“It’s usually a conversation between the providers and the patient,” he said.
“The provider ultimately has to make the decision based on the patient’s acuity level. But if there is a request to an outlying hospital such as Advent or Pardee then they voice that request to our providers and the decision is based on the level of care needed.”
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Mitchell Black covers Buncombe County and health care for the Citizen Times. Email him at mblack@citizentimes.com or follow him on Twitter @MitchABlack. Please help support local journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Can Asheville ambulance patients choose non-Mission hospitals?
