Dear Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC and Mission Hospital,
I work as an English professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. Today I got a notification in the mail letting me know, officially, that “Mission Health (Mission)has chosen to leave Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.” Beginning October 5, I will no longer be covered at Mission Hospitals, Mission’s outpatient facilities,. and most of Mission’s health care providers.
This letter advises me to seek medical care in the case of an emergency from Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva or Pardee or Parkridge Hospital in Hendersonville. Sylva is 45 minutes from my house, but I work just a few miles from there, so there’s that. Hendersonville is equally as far. I get routine mammograms through a Mission provider, so now I’ll likely have to travel hours for that proceedure.
But the reason that I’m writing is this: I need to you to tell me what to do in the case of an all too probable scenario. In 2013, while I was at work at Western Carolina University, located a stone’s throw from Harris Regional Hospital, I suffered a massive heart attack. It was the result of a genetic issue that affects otherwise healthy women. It’s called spontaneous coronary artery dissection, and there was nothing that I could have done to prevent it. Further, the kind of heart attack generally caused by this diagnosis is the one called the widow maker; the mortality rate is extremely high as is the change of recurrance.

When it happened — and during a phase of extreme denial; I’m a vegan, nonsmoker, long distance running woman who was 43 and weighed 110 pounds— a friend drove me to Harris, which is still covered by Blue Cross of NC. There, I was diagnosed and put on a helocopter to Mission Hosptial in Asheville. I was told by the diagnosing physician that if I didn’t get there within 20 minutes, I would probably die. Harris is not equipped to handle what happened to me. Mission is.

Mission Hospital saved my life that day, and my cardiologist is affiliated with Mission Hospital as well. If I have another such heart attack, what should I do? Drive 45 minutes to Sylva to a hospital that can’t help me, or drive 45 minutes to a hospital in Hendersonville about which I know nothing? Chances are, I’ll be dead in 20 minutes.
Thanks for taking the time to let me know how to proceed.
Laura