Anyone interested in witnessing the next chapter in the future of our area’s health care should mark their calendars for 10:30 a.m., Sept. 11.

That’s the date Natchez Regional Medical Center will be sold — barring any last-minute changes or a seemingly unlikely petition of area residents.

State law allows that a petition of 1,500 voters brought on or before the date of the sale can send the matter to a vote. In such a case, the people of the county would vote whether to sell the hospital.

Most of us probably know the saga of Natchez Regional by now. A series of poor management decisions, combined with changes in healthcare laws first put the hospital on life support in 2007. Two bankruptcies and one previous failed attempt to sell the county-owned hospital followed.

The most baffling thing and one that I hope the hospital’s former CEO, board and attorney are forced eventually to explain one day is exactly how their management was so poor that the hospital burned through millions and millions of dollars over the last two years.

After a lawsuit settlement with its former management company, the hospital received enough funds to retire significant portions of its taxpayer-backed bond debt. But instead of raising their hands and publicly talking to the owners of the hospital — Adams County residents — the hospital’s leadership proceeded to spend the money on a failing operating plan that allowed the facility to continue spiraling downward.

All that said, however, I’ve practically lost all hope that the public will ever get some of the answers to how and why the hospital was so poorly managed.

Does the blame lie with inept former hospital board members who were hoodwinked by fast-talking former CEOs and wise-seeming legal advisors?

Perhaps.

Or should the problem more flatly be laid at the feet of Adams County Supervisors — the public’s elected representatives for all county matters?

Clearly, both groups are to blame.

The hospital didn’t get into such awful shape overnight, and it wasn’t simply one person who caused the problem. It was a system that is bloated and that for years had political appointees leading the hospital board of trustees — many of whom feared questioning the CEO, CFO or hospital attorney, who many say actually led the hospital.

But it’s not just the “officials” that are to blame, too.

When the county’s once — perhaps still — largest asset gets sold for 50-percent of its book value, plus 17 years of prepaid taxes, we should blame ourselves.

Supervisors recently admitted that more people had called and expressed interest in the thin possibility that the county might adopt building codes than anything related to the hospital — a key to our community’s medical community and one of the area’s largest employers.

Why? Because we’re selfish — just like some of the fools who were apparently making horrible business decisions for the hospital.

Recently, I heard a businessman in town say the entire hospital debacle was a “damned shame.”

Well said.

 

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