NATCHEZ — Natchez Regional Medical Center took an only loosely organized approach to the federal audits that may have played a part in its 2014 bankruptcy, sources at the hospital said.

When the hospital declared bankruptcy in March, one of the key reasons cited was an abundance of so-called RAC audits, audits of billing requests from the hospital completed on the behalf of Medicaid and Medicare.

If a RAC auditor declared a particular provision of service was not fully justified or properly documented, the amount of what the auditor declared to be an overpayment for services was deducted from the next payment to the hospital from Medicaid and Medicare.

RAC audits can be appealed, and hospital officials have in the past said appeals have a very high success rate.

But sources at the hospital, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said even though the RAC program had been in place since 2010, the hospital never had a point person for responding to the audits.

Instead, the hospital had a small committee of employees who had multiple other duties in addition to responding to RAC audits.

“(The people in charge of responding to RAC audits) had about four jobs,” a source said. “The RAC audits never had a designated spot, (one employee) got three or four one day, (another employee) got two or three the next day.”

Another source said the employees assigned the RAC audit appeals often didn’t get them until “after the fact,” when it was too late to appeal them.

Following the big RAC hit in mid-2013 that was cited at the time of the bankruptcy filing, the hospital hired an outside firm to manage the appeals, sources said.

Hospital Chief Financial Officer Charles Mock declined to speak on the record about the matter.

The hospital filed for bankruptcy in March, and has since then spent more than $1.6 million in legal and consulting fees as part of the bankruptcy and sale process.

The sale of the hospital was awarded earlier this month to Community Health Systems for $10 million, though CHS’ initial payment package will also include $8 million in pre-paid taxes, bringing the total — which is needed to cover the costs of paying off the hospital’s bonds and some obligations to creditors — to $18 million.

A tentative plan for paying off the hospital’s debts — of which the sale is a key component — has been approved by most of the hospital’s creditors, and the federal bankruptcy court overseeing the case will have a confirmation hearing in Natchez Monday.

With the judge’s approval, the sale will close at midnight Oct. 1.