The state’s top health agency is working to gather more information regarding the death of a Mission Hospital patient in an emergency department bathroom after staff did not quickly respond to his call for help.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would not provide Asheville Watchdog specific information about any potential investigations but said it is consulting with CMS about the Feb. 10 death.
“First, it is critical that every person in North Carolina can get the care they need from providers and local hospitals,” NCDHHS spokesperson Summer Tonizzo said Wednesday. “One of our priorities is making sure every North Carolinian can access the care they need at the right time and in the right place.
“We are aware of the tragic death that occurred in the ED last week at Mission Hospital and while we can’t comment on possible investigations, we are working to ensure patient safety. All complaints we receive are confidential and are being reviewed by NCDHHS. The team is working to gather more information to determine next steps in consultation with CMS.”
A CMS spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing or potential investigations.
Mission Health spokesperson Nancy Lindell did not answer questions about whether any investigators had visited the hospital and if leadership had made changes in staffing or training following the death. “We don’t have anything further for you,” she said.
On the evening of Feb. 10, a patient arrived by ambulance at the emergency department with a respiratory complaint or chest pain and was sent to an internal processing area.
Medical staff ordered an electrocardiogram, or EKG, for the man, but before the procedure, he needed to go to the bathroom. While inside, he pulled a call bell, but no one responded for 12-15 minutes, multiple nurses said, until a triage nurse checked the bathroom and found him dead. The Watchdog was the first to report the death on Feb. 20.
Following death, hospital fires one employee
Lindell told The Watchdog thatday thatMission was investigating the incident and had fired one employee.
“Our investigation indicates that certain staff who had been trained did not follow hospital protocols,” Lindell said at the time. “We have terminated one individual and have reported to the appropriate agencies.”
Nurses told The Watchdog that they thought staffing levels were inadequate that evening and led to the man’s call not receiving an immediate response.
NCDHHS and CMS have previously investigated the hospital, focusing primarily on the emergency department. After a late 2023 investigation, they determined that 18 people were harmed, four of whom died, because of violations of federal standards of care in the emergency department.
Several emergency department nurses who spoke to The Watchdog said conditionshad improved shortly after the immediate jeopardy finding. The hospital hired more staff and worked with nurses to develop emergency department management strategies, among other improvements.
But conditions declined when Mission went back to pre-2024 procedures, contracts for traveler nurses expired, nurses quit and staffing in the emergency department grew sparse again.
Nurses said they are often overwhelmed by crowded nights in the emergency department and not enough staff to immediately work with patients.
Even after the Feb. 10 death, the department is strained, according to nurses The Watchdog spoke to Wednesday.
“I was there last night,” said Alyssa Aradia, an ER nurse, discussing her Tuesday night shift. “We had 130 in the department when I got there. We never got below 95. So that’s a lot of patients. We had patients in the waiting room that were already admitted, just waiting for beds. They never even made it to an ED room. We had high acuity patients in the express pods [contained parts of the waiting area].
“The express pods turned into holding pods, and nurses had to come down from step-down units or wherever to watch them while we did stuff out of the waiting room. Some people were waiting 9, 10, 11 hours in the waiting room for a bed upstairs that were already admitted by the time I left.”
Ashley Bunting, an ER nurse who worked all day Wednesday, said there were 70 patients in the emergency department when she started at 7 a.m. and about 140 patients at max. Patients were lining the halls, Bunting said, adding that it felt like the most intense day since Tropical Storm Helene.
Bunting said it has been mostly “radio silence” from administration following the death.
Training on call bell response
Aradia said that since the death, nurses were required to complete call bell response training and now there is an “increased demand for nurses to be responsive on the radio.”
She explained this means that even if she was preparing a blood pressure medicine “to make sure somebody stays alive, and somebody wants a blanket, and I don’t answer on the radio about the fact that I heard them say that they want a blanket, I can get written up for it.”
Bunting said she saw nurses drilling for how to respond to call bells like the one the patient rang.
Nurses are demanding HCA Healthcare, Mission’s owner, staff the hospital better. For years they have contended that inadequate staffing could lead to harm and death.
A National Nurses United flyer includes an announcement about nurses’ plans ton hold a protest on March 6.
“A patient may have recently died at Mission Hospital due to dangerously low staffing levels,” a National Nurses United flyer obtained by The Watchdog reads. “Nurses have been warning for months that this could happen if HCA refused to take immediate action to ensure safe staffing.”
Union nurses plan to hold a public demonstration March 6 at the hospital campus. According to the flyer, their demands include improved contracts, break relief, more staff, no more hallway beds, and additional pay for picking up extra shifts.
They also are supporting the efforts of Reclaim Healthcare WNC, a coalition of elected officials, doctors, advocates, clergy, and health care workers seeking to replace HCA with a nonprofit owner.
In response to the Feb. 10 death, the group has scheduled a news conference Friday morning during which it will “call for Mission to increase staffing levels at the hospital and provide more information about recent deaths at the hospital,” according to a news release it issued earlier this week.
Many nurses feel as though nothing has changed, despite regulatory action and community outcry.
“It just somehow feels even worse, not better,” Aradia said.
Bunting echoed her concern.
“It feels very much like our cries for help are going unanswered,” Bunting said. Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press April 26, 2025
A decade after a federal judge ordered North Carolina to adopt a plan to give juvenile offenders serving life sentences a “meaningful opportunity” for parole, a lawsuit making its way through the court system says the state has failed to follow through.
Earlier this month a judge denied the state’s motion to dismiss the suit, which was filed in 2023, noting “concerning” accounts of omitted and false information in plaintiff Brett Abrams’ parole file.
Abrams, 56, is serving a life sentence for murder at the minimum security prison in Hillsborough. He leaves prison five days a week to work a full-time job at a meat packing plant. In his 40 years of incarceration, he’s accrued 11 infractions, the last being in 2005.
On paper, he seems like a great candidate for parole. But the four-person commission that has sole discretion over parole decisions in North Carolina has denied him every time since he first became eligible in 1993.
Abrams has undergone two parole reviews since the state implemented its new process for juvenile offenders — colloquially known as the “Hayden Plan” for the case Hayden v. Keller that spurred its creation.
However, he continues to be denied his freedom.
A brutal killing
In 1983, Abrams stabbed and killed his 20-year old neighbor at her parents’ home after she confronted him for secretly watching her sunbathe. Abrams was 14 at the time of the slaying, and at 15 he was charged as an adult and sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
Depositions from Abrams’ lawsuit revealed his parole file had omitted crucial information that might have helped with his release. It also contained inaccurate information, including that he had an open homicide case against him for the 1982 death of his brother. In reality, the Iredell County Sheriffs’ Office had ruled the death an accident and closed the case.
“We saw in his profile pretty significant, very material mistakes that included misleading information, lies, things that were simply not true which we believe are so significant that it’s a sort of evidence in itself that the system is broken,” Abrams’ attorney, Jake Sussman, told Carolina Public Press.
And despite Abrams seeking psychological counseling and treatment based on the recommendation of the Parole Commission in 2018, those records were not included in his 2020 review.
“One would assume accurate and comprehensive summaries with relevant information would be essential where commissioners vote on more than 100 cases a day,” Judge Richard Myers wrote in his April 2 ruling.
The court cannot reverse the decisions made by the state’s Parole Commission, meaning the legality of Abrams’ continued incarceration is not being questioned. But Myers determined it is “within this court’s purview to review for Eighth Amendment violations,” as proven in Hayden v. Keller.
“What we’ve asked the judge to do is to find that the current system is unconstitutional as it applies to Mr. Abrams, and therefore as it would apply to all of the juvenile offenders, and develop a plan to actually have a review process that works,” Sussman said.
Juvenile offenders at mercy of the system
Decades of judicial rulings have given states plenty of discretion over how to handle the parole process.
North Carolina’s system has changed several times, and starting in 1994 the state eliminated parole altogether in favor of a different system called “structured sentencing,” which sets a minimum sentence and allows the Parole Commission to set the terms of release for felons once they reach that mark.
Those imprisoned prior to 1994 are still subject to the state’s older system, which Sussman described as a “constitutional mess,” particularly for juvenile offenders.
Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 2010s — Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama — resulted in monumental changes for people serving life sentences due to crimes they committed as juveniles. In those rulings, the Supreme Court severely limited states’ abilities to administer life sentences without parole to juvenile offenders, deciding that such actions constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
The logic behind that ruling is that juvenile offenders are more likely to respond to rehabilitation and reform compared to people imprisoned for crimes they committed later in life.
“Research in the area of brain development shows that the brain is not fully developed until about age 25,” explained Erin Fitzgerald, a professor at Elon University who specializes in juvenile justice. “This lack of development makes juveniles more impulsive, susceptible to peer pressure and unable to fully appreciate the consequences of their actions. However, it also makes them more malleable and capable of rehabilitation.”
Justice for juvenile offenders
The Hayden Plan at the center of Abrams’ lawsuit was born out of the precedent set by the Graham and Miller cases.
In 2010, a North Carolina inmate serving a life sentence for sexual assaults he committed as a teenager in the 1980s sued the Parole Commission for not giving him a fair chance to make his case for release.
His name was Shaun Hayden.
Every year after becoming eligible for parole, Hayden would receive the same letter from the commission saying that he had been denied parole, despite never having interacted with them in any way or being notified that he was up for review.
“He didn’t think that was fair, and he was correct,” said Ben Finholt, who was one of Hayden’s attorneys in his lawsuit against the commission. “It was a sham parole system where (the commission) never talked to anyone. They just review documents every year, and if not much changes, then you just get denied every year without them ever talking to you.”
A District Court ruled in Hayden’s favor, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Florida. The state lost its appeal and in 2018 was directed to implement a new plan for handling parole review for juvenile offenders.
That plan guaranteed juvenile offenders a 30-minute video conference with one of the commissioners, a specialized case analyst and, in the case of denial, a letter detailing why the inmate was denied parole and recommendations for future reviews.
New parole plan, old issues
The new plan hasn’t exactly led to substantive changes, however.
Finholt, who now serves as Abrams’ attorney for his parole review (separate from the lawsuit that Sussman is handling), has had a firsthand account of the Hayden Plan’s shortcomings.
“The parole case analyst in Brett’s case admitted under oath that she did not consider the advocacy letter that I wrote for Brett in 2020, that it was not part of the record and that she had made no changes to her process based on the fact that the person being considered for parole was a juvenile,” he said. “That is explicitly contrary to (the Hayden court’s) holding that people who were kids at the time of the crime are entitled constitutionally to a different process.”
That was one of the reasons Myers, the judge in Abrams’ lawsuit, denied the state’s motion to dismiss the suit.
However, Myers also wrote that it is “still unclear” based on the facts of the case whether the commissioners would have changed their decision on Abrams if the information in his file had been completely accurate.
He declined to rule in favor of either party and ordered more discovery on the matter. When that is completed in June, he may issue a final ruling or set a trial date.
Sussman said that if Abrams wins this lawsuit, he would advocate for a decision-making process that is less arbitrary, such as a rubric or points-based system.
Finholt has also advocated for such a change, and he said it makes sense regardless of people’s opinions regarding parole.
“My personal feeling, based on my long professional experience, is that most of the folks who are up for parole would do just fine outside of prison,” he said. “However, even if you’re a person who disagrees with me on that front, you should still dislike the current process because it’s not informed by any evidence or any data.
“If you’re the kind of person who thinks that most folks should stay inside, you should also be horrified by the fact that these release decisions are being made essentially on people’s guts.”
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The content presents a case focused on the rights of juvenile offenders, specifically in relation to parole decisions. The emphasis on rehabilitation, fairness in parole processes, and concerns over the accuracy and fairness of the system reflects a more progressive, or center-left, perspective. It advocates for juvenile offenders’ opportunity for parole based on their potential for reform, which aligns with broader left-leaning views on criminal justice reform and the belief in rehabilitation over punitive measures. The inclusion of legal cases like Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama suggests an alignment with the idea of justice for juvenile offenders in line with constitutional protections. While the tone is not overtly political, the framing of the issues reflects concerns typically associated with progressive criminal justice reform.
SUMMARY: Mental health professionals express concern over potential cuts to the 988 suicide prevention hotline, particularly for LGBTQ+ youth. A leaked budget draft reveals the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for specialized services. Since its launch in July 2022, the hotline has answered over 219,000 calls, with rising demand for mental health services noted by professionals like Shawn Thomas. The North Carolina Department of Health emphasizes that federal funding is crucial for timely call responses and effective service delivery. Advocates are alarmed, warning that losing this resource would significantly impact vulnerable populations.
Mental health professionals say the 988 hotline is an invaluable resource, and any cuts would affect the strides being made in the state to meet growing demand.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-25 15:59:00
(The Center Square) – Eliminating policies in higher education that U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy believes are detrimental to the best in health care is a step in the right direction, the North Carolina Republican says.
U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.
Murphy.House gov
“I applaud the Trump administration for rooting out the discriminatory and demeaning requirements of DEI in medication education,” Murphy said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. “These practices reward political activism and not merit. Patients deserve better.
“Liberal apologists played with patient’s lives to push a progressive discriminatory agenda. Doctors need to be selected as the brightest and hardest working, not on identity politics.”
The third graph of Section 2 reads in part, “The attorney general and the secretary of Education, in consultation with the secretary of Health and Human Services, shall investigate and take appropriate action to terminate unlawful discrimination by American medical schools or graduate medical education entities that is advanced by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education or the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education or other accreditors of graduate medical education, including unlawful ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ requirements under the guise of accreditation standards.”
Murphy, a practicing urologist, has repeatedly chastised the medical schools promoting diversity policies over merit.
Murphy opined, “Instead of learning to take care of patients, medical residents are studying this nonsense. No wonder the questions about NIH funding are being asked.”
The National Institutes of Health operates with a budget of $47 billion. For worldwide biomedical research, it is the largest public funder.
Murphy believes the American health care system “is killing the patient” with the middlemen, including the education component.
He’s also spoken out on the Association of American Medical Colleges, saying it has been “exposed for their racially divisive lies.” A significant infant-mortality study, The National Review reported, was edited to preserve racial perspective. The story says “researchers deliberately obscured a data point about white babies under the care of Black physicians because ‘it undermines the narrative.’”
“Falsifying research,” Murphy said, “is why Americans have lost trust in medical education. All those involved in this scandal need to resign.”
