Natchez Regional took another step closer to obscurity last week.

Adams County and the hospital’s seemingly lone buyer — Community Health Systems — finalized terms and signed an asset purchase agreement last week.

The 54-year-old facility, having been led by ill-equipped leaders and mismanaged within an inch of its life, is worth to CHS $10 million in cash and the prepayment of up to $8 million in property tax.

The people at the center of the hospital deal can spin that however they’d like, but it’s not a great deal for the county. Any buyer that wasn’t a non-profit would have to pay property tax so the net effect is the county is poised to sell the facility for $10 million.

The day the hospital sells will be a sad day.

A once mighty and proud fixture of our region’s healthcare community now sits in bankruptcy for the second time in five years and the owners had to practically beg someone to buy it off them.

The federal bankruptcy judge overseeing Natchez Regional’s bankruptcy is expected to review the sales plan Wednesday. He must give it his thumbs up before Adams County Supervisors can take the next step in the sales process.

Voters could potentially still stymie the deal. State law allows the sale decision to be put on a countywide ballot if 1,500 voters sign a petition to force the matter.

That scenario seems unlikely, however. As county supervisors have said lately, voters seem more concerned about the slim possibility that the county could adopt building codes than giving away the hospital for a song.

Despite the apathy many in the community have over the much drawn out saga of selling the hospital, a few questions remain.

Will anything ever be done to explain the horrible mismanagement that led to the hospital burning through millions and millions of dollars while the public owners were unaware of the financial problems?

Beyond the “why” and “how” of what happened in the past, is what will happen in the present to the creditors that are owed money.

The $18 million total deal will pay for a portion, but not all the hospital’s debts.

At the initial bankruptcy filing, the hospital showed just under $21 million in total liabilities.

That was before racking up substantial legal bills tied to the bankruptcy and sales process.

If supervisors, several of whom expressed regret for the hospital’s likely sale, truly want to come clean with residents they’d come out and publicly explain their plans for covering any hospital debt left after the $18 million is spent.

Will they leave unsecured creditors left out to dry? Will they “own up” and pay any remaining debt, as a penance for sitting by and watching as the ship went down on their watch?

Beyond a simple — one page would suffice — explanation of the finances, supervisors should demand the hospital provide the public with the details the hospital’s legal fees over the last two years.

Certainly the hospital cannot claim it’s not the public’s right to know what the bankruptcy and sales process cost them.

If some of the creditors wind up getting crushed in the bankruptcy, at least the public would know where some of the money went and for what services.

Like much of the sales process, the hospital’s leadership likely would never consider such and the supervisors — who might like to know the answers themselves — don’t seem to have the backbone necessary to demand answers.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.