WNC wellness review: Mission set to offer domestic partner benefits; hospital wars and more

Mission Health System will offer domestic-partner benefits, starting Jan. 2012

Mission Health System’s policy change is intended to help its hospitals retain the best staff possible, says Janet Moore, director of marketing and Web services.

“We have wonderful staff, but if we’re going to continue to be able to attract the best and the brightest, we need to be able to have relevant benefits,” she explains. “We look at what we need to do to provide the best services, the best care to folks in the region. We’ve got to have benefits that are relevant and competitive.”

She notes that regional competitors across the Southeast such as Duke University Hospital in Durham, Novant Health in Winston-Salem, and Emory Adventist Hospital already offer such benefits. …

Jake Frankel, mountainx.com

The battle for patients in Asheville, Buncombe, Henderson

If this is a war, Mission Health System has crossed the demilitarized zone and set up a beachhead near the enemy’s fortress.

While the language is a tad melodramatic, hospital officials, physicians and some politicians have used such martial terminology to describe Mission’s latest expansion, a partnership with Hendersonville’s Pardee Memorial Hospital. … The battle for customers in south Buncombe and north Henderson counties is emblematic of the strategy at hospitals nationally and in North Carolina, where patients spent nearly $20 billion in 2009.

Asheville Citizen-Times

N.C. House committee will review “related health issues” on Oct. 20 at WNC Ag Center

You are hereby notified that the House Select Committee on Certificate of Need Process and Related Hospital Issues will meet [Oct. 20] at 6 p.m. at the WNC Ag Center. [TOPIC:] Regular House Select Committee on Certificate of Need and Related Hospital Issues Meeting with Presentations on COPA and public comment to follow.

For hospitals small and large, merging means money-saving

For MedWest CEO Mike Poore, a single figure explains the power of affiliating with Charlotte-based Carolinas HealthCare System: $15 million.

That’s the amount the company, which now manages MedWest, found in savings across its three hospitals in Haywood, Jackson and Swain counties.

MedWest is not alone in North Carolina — or nationwide — in benefiting from an affiliation. …

Asheville Citizen-Times

Asheville listed as one of eight best U.S. cities for weight loss

From scenic trails to lush farmers’ markets, these active American towns offer ideal surroundings for slimming down…

#5 Asheville, NC

According to polling done by the Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index, citizens of Asheville eat fresh produce more regularly than almost any other place in the country, in no small part due to its 15 farmer’s and smaller “tailgate” markets. This town is a hot spot of the farm-to-table movement, and locally sourced ingredients fill the menus of its nearly 250 independent restaurants (that’s a lot for a place with fewer than 100,000 residents). You might think that the local focus on delicious food would result in weight gain, not loss, but Asheville boasts low obesity rates. …

mountainx.com

 

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About Margaret Williams
Editor Margaret Williams first wrote for Xpress in 1994. An Alabama native, she has lived in Western North Carolina since 1987 and completed her Masters of Liberal Arts & Sciences from UNC-Asheville in 2016. Follow me @mvwilliams

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