Mission Hospital traces its roots to 1885, when a group of women calling themselves "The Little Flower Mission" saw a need for a hospital in Asheville that would care for those in need, regardless of their ability to pay. They raised funds by selling flowers on the streets of the city, started their hospital in a rented five-room house on what is now Biltmore Avenue near Hilliard Avenue, and expanded and relocated four times in the next seven years. By 1940, there were five small general hospitals in the city, but medical professionals had begun to see the need for a major medical center for western North Carolina. In 1947, Mission Hospital merged with
Biltmore Hospital, a facility that was established in 1896 by the
All Soul's Parish. A new hospital was constructed on land donated by
George Vanderbilt, a facility that was renamed Memorial Mission Hospital. Over time, Memorial Mission Hospital absorbed Victoria Hospital (formerly called Norburn Hospital, founded in 1928) and the Asheville Colored Hospital (founded in 1943). Memorial Mission Medical Center and St. Joseph's Hospital established an organizational partnership in 1996 and formally merged in 1998
St. Joseph's Hospital St. Joseph's Hospital was established by the
Sisters of Mercy in 1900 as a
sanatorium for the treatment of
tuberculosis. Memorial Mission acquired McDowell Hospital in
Marion and Blue Ridge Community Hospital in
Spruce Pine. Mission Health was the state's sixth-largest health system and the
western North Carolina’s only
not-for-profit, independent community
hospital system governed and managed exclusively in western North Carolina.
Purchase by HCA The $1.5 billion sale of Mission Health to the for-profit HCA Healthcare, announced in March 2018, was completed on February 1, 2019. Since the purchase was finalized, there has been a stark rise in the number of complaints from patients and staff alike regarding the hospital – including, but not limited to, long wait times in the emergency department, chronic understaffing, broken equipment, unsanitary conditions, patients lying in feces for extended periods of time, medication administration being delayed for hours at a time, nurses taking on twice their normal workload, and doctors leaving due to pay disputes. The
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has given Mission its most severe sanction, "immediate jeopardy," at least four times since the hospital was acquired by HCA. As recently as 2026, state investigators found false documentation, "systemic staffing failures," an "unsafe environment," two deaths, patient privacy violations, "systemic and recurring" noncompliance with federal standards, and failure to isolate infectious diseases. If concerns go unaddressed, Mission could lose access to
Medicaid and
Medicare funding. == Current operations ==