The more tidbits of information seep from the walls of Natchez Regional Medical Center, the more disappointed I become in the people at the center of the hospital’s leadership and the so-called experts purportedly helping guide the hospital out of its mess.

Several Natchez Regional employees recently explained on a condition of anonymity how ridiculously inept the management team at the hospital has been for months.

What they described was a textbook case for atrocious team management — top leaders who went more than a year without having a department head meeting, financial leaders that chided employees for simply asking questions and just inexcusable lapses in logic with regard to billing for services.

If what these folks said is true — and why would they lie at this point — the hospital staff has experienced less leadership than most junior high school civic clubs muster.

The single most important thing in leading a team is communicating to them. It appears in the hospital’s case, the lack of communication extended to nearly all levels of the hospital. One manager said she learned of the hospital’s bankruptcy only after reading it in the newspaper.

Perhaps millions and millions of dollars were lost through two baffling sets of circumstances. Allegedly, several large reimbursement audits were never appealed, instead simply expiring on a desk at the hospital. The hospital’s medical foundation employed a number of physicians but never completed the necessary paperwork allowing the hospital to get reimbursed by government sources and insurance companies. At a time when the hospital was already struggling, one would think ensuring every penny possible was being billed and collected would be a minimum. Apparently, this was not the case. All the while the hospital was contracting with consultants and attorneys who seemingly have milked the hospital for all its worth.

In a document provided recently to the Natchez Regional Medical Center’s Board of Trustees, the hospital’s financial leaders indicate that through Aug. 12, the hospital had incurred nearly $1.6 million in consultant and attorney fees related to the bankruptcy.

Of those, $710,000 was paid to Healthcare Management Partners, though it’s possible some of this includes the $500,000 the firm was paid to facilitate the sale. The firm’s grand scheme of luring a buyer that would purchase the hospital, bring a pile of new doctors to town and build a brand, spanking new hospital building sort of crumbled.

In the end, what the firm effectively did was walk across the street to crosstown rival Natchez Community Hospital and beg them to buy Natchez Regional. Had the hospital not paid HMP a penny, perhaps the funds could have paid for the unpaid employee benefits or the unpaid employee retirement payments.

A Jackson law firm, Butler, Snow, billed the hospital for $408,924, per the hospital’s internal document.

But most interesting are the payments to two attorneys — Eileen Shaffer who has the reputation for being one of the best bankruptcy lawyers in Mississippi and Walter Brown, the local attorney who for years as guided the hospital’s leadership. Shaffer was paid $103,156 for her services as the hospital’s lead bankruptcy lawyer. Brown was paid $99,674, for whatever he’s done — which based on the lack of court documents he’s personally filed seems to mostly be reading the work of others.

Brown’s payment total at Aug. 12 seems odd, though, since the bankruptcy records show he was paid $123,272.44 on March 24, the day prior to the hospital’s bankruptcy filing.

Two people close to the case have said Brown privately agreed to repay approximately $30,000 of the March 24 payment to avoid having the unsecured creditors throw a fit and potentially hold up the case. Perhaps that’s part of the cause of the discrepancy between the figures.

The huge sums of money — both lost by the hospital and paid to the “professionals” — are terribly disappointing. As the hospital figuratively burned to the ground, a few select people were making their living off stirring the ashes.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Democrat. He can be reached at kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.