The nearly yearlong saga of attempting to sell Natchez Regional Medical Center may soon be coming to an end — one way or another.

Friday the Mississippi Development Authority considered the request of NRMC to allow the sales process to receive special MDA recognition as an economic development project.

Doing so would allow the company interested in buying the hospital to pre-pay property tax as part of an unusual purchase agreement. Many people near the discussion suggest the designation is a shoo-in, but such a decision seems a far stretch of the intended purpose of the Regional Economic Development Act.

At the moment the only company publicly interested in purchasing county-owned Natchez Regional is the parent company of cross-town rival hospital Natchez Community Hospital.

The idea for both entities is to simply merge together and become more efficient.

We agree that having a single hospital in Natchez likely means the business of health care would operate more efficiently and perhaps ultimately result in a better quality of care.

However, contending that the sale of a public asset to a private one is an economic development project still seems a bit of a stretch.

In the world of business, “efficient” often means doing the same work with less people — that likely won’t result in job creation.

We would have hoped — if creating new jobs or maintaining current ones wasn’t an option — the hospital could have been sold for real dollars that paid off the facility’s debt.