Mission Health’s communications department: Lay off 8 employees, outsource some work, then advertise job openings for 4

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Mission Health, just days after laying off 8 employees in its marketing and communications department and announcing that it was outsourcing some work to the local Integritive2 pr/marketing agency, the hospital system has posted job openings for 4 of those it let go.

On Jan. 26, Mission posted the following job openings: Comm Mgr, Events Mgr, Graphic artist, Marketing Mgr, Multimedia Splst & Wrkflow. All are listed as jobs in its marketing and community relations department.

All you can do is shake your head at the corporate gyrations, I guess. But pretty maddening. And insulting to the employees affected.

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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9 Comments

  1. big red February 10, 2012

    Mission Hospital is getting more and more corrupt, not only that you can pretty much count on getting an infection after surgery, then you will get screwed by their billing practices.

    Even after making payments to them every month they turned us over for collection!

    WHY? They overbilled me because I had insurance, claim that is standard operating procedure, to pay for people who don’t have ins. Left me with 4000.00 extra to pay.

    Again, even though I paid them every month for over a year, they turned me over for collection. NICE FOLKS!!!!

    Do everything you can not to go to Mission Hospital.

    Reply
    1. THEBUSINESSOFHEALTHCARE February 10, 2012

      Mission Hospital serves a population which is largely covered by Medicaid or Medicare or is uninsured. The 25% of patients who are insured do heavily subsidize the remainder of the client population. Many of the insured include Mission staff who provide “free”, seemingly unlimited care day in and day out, only to struggle with medical bills themselves. Mission Hospital is self-insured, meaning that they retain the right to deny payment of any or all services rendered to its staff. And those payments are denied–repeatedly. The inherent conflict of interest is startling and would not be tolerated in any other country. I am truly sorry for your circumstances, Red. Unfortunately, they are shared by many in the community. My wish is that others will wake up to this soon.

      Reply
  2. some local guy February 8, 2012

    First, you outsource work that might otherwise be performed by in-house employees. Since Mission Hospital does not have their own advertising and public relations departments, they aren’t outsourcing anything – they’re HIRING a local business. Second, business is business. If you have someone in place you feel can’t do the job you expect them to do, do you keep them in place and hurt your bottom line, or do you find someone who can fit the job!? Also, I don’t hear anything about the 7,992 other employees Mission Hospital employs, just the eight that were let go. Way to be an objective reporter Jason! Didn’t know you were having that much trouble getting page views!?

    Reply
  3. Tucker D February 4, 2012

    That’s an understatement. 🙂 Probably following the model every larger company/corporation seems to follow these daysL Anyone with seniority or near the top of their pay scale is “let go” for whatever reason, so they can be replaced by the free market lower paid worker. And as a right-to-work state, you can be fired for any reason (and with no socialist unions out there representing the worker, its just the great American capitalist free market so beloved by Mr. Romney and Gingrich).

    Of course, this is all speculation, but the timing of the announcements seemed a bit off. Might have been better to fire, I mean, restructure the department, then wait a little bit to announce the agency pick up. Well, that’s what a p.r. professional with any brand management/crisis communication skills would have done. It looks to me someone simply was given the duty to announce the agency got the work and just went through the motions of a release without looking at possible consequences.

    Reply
  4. Scared employee February 3, 2012

    Someone better look into the latest Mission fiasco.. DUPLICATE MEDICAL RECORD NUMBERS! MISSION IS A VERY UNSAFE PLACE! Look into it.. It is true and they are scared to death the media will find this out.. NO transparency.. big coverup!

    Reply
  5. Little Bird February 1, 2012

    The new vice president, Rowena Timms, had no intention of keeping anyone who had been there for any length of time, no matter what their skills…She was intimidated by the people already in place and this is how she marks her territory (same thing she did at Caromont Health in Gastonia). And no, Mission has no intention of offering any kind of job to the staff members who were fired. Again, that is Mission HR-speak for “Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.”

    Thanks, Ashvegas, for letting people know what is going on at Mission…

    Reply
  6. ES January 31, 2012

    In the initial article that I saw about the layoffs, it mentioned that Mission was going to try to place some of the canned employees elsewhere within the company. Were those new listings part of that effort? Anyway, best of luck to the people affected by this layoff. This is a rough town to find work in.

    Reply
  7. Avlnc January 31, 2012

    Mission is a very poor place to work. The new person (SVP) in charge of the marketing dept. is a tyrant and on a huge ego trip worse than Janet Moore. I would try to avoid working or consulting for Mission at all costs, but in a town like Asheville where there are so few job opportunities, this may be about as good as it gets.

    Reply
    1. m June 6, 2012

      This is definitely a poor place to work! Never enough help, poor employee morale everywhere:( I suffer from severe depression(many of you will laugh I’m sure) and most of it’s job related and I’m sure most of you don’t care:( i would never recommend this place to work to anyone and I sure would never recomment nursing as a profession in this town. In fact if I were younger I would go back to school to do something else!!!

      Reply

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