NATCHEZ — When Natchez Regional Medical Center goes on the auction block Thursday, it’ll likely be a low-key affair without the potential drama of a bidding war.

“No one has qualified as a bidder besides Community Health Systems,” said Scott Slover, the attorney for the Adams County Board of Supervisors. “It will probably be a formality.”

Bidders had to be qualified by Monday.

The county-owned hospital is set for auction at 10 a.m. Thursday in the chancery courtroom in the Adams County courthouse. The sale is a key component of the hospital’s bankruptcy plan, and hospital officials have said selling it is the only way to keep the cash-strapped facility open. CHS already owns Natchez Community Hospital.

Adams County Board of Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said he will likely lead the auction proceedings Thursday, though he would have to confer with legal counsel ahead of time as to the exact procedure because he has never done anything like this before.

“I’m greeting this really with mixed emotions,” he said.

“Part of me has an attachment to the hospital being the county-owned hospital, and for many years I have been a strong supporter of maintaining the hospital,” he said. “But in the past year-and-a-half, with the financial situation, the other side of me is saying that it is time to go ahead and get it sold and move on.”

Through the evolution of health care and the region at large, Natchez-Adams County is no longer an area that can support two hospital systems, Grennell said.

“We can’t have a county-owned hospital because we can’t buy Natchez Community hospital, so we have to look at CHS acquiring NRMC,” he said.

CHS has signed a binding agreement with the county that will put forward a total package of $18 million for the hospital. If a second bidder had materialized, the bankruptcy court-approved plan would have required a substantially similar bid of at least $19 million for the purchase.

But while CHS’s total package is $18 million, only $10 million of that is cash for the hospital’s assets. The other $8 million is in pre-paid ad valorem taxes. In addition of getting the court’s blessing, the structure of the package was also vetted by the Mississippi Attorney General’s office.

Even as the auction for the hospital is being conducted, the hospital’s creditors are voting on a plan for recovery of their debts. The tentative plan, which will pay off bonds, loans and other end-stage financing before funds are distributed to unsecured creditors, will pay no more than 50 percent recovery to the hospital’s unsecured creditors.

The plan was crafted in conjunction with the committee representing the unsecured creditors, and a letter urging the creditors’ assent to the plan from the committee was included when it was distributed to them.

The confirmation hearing for the plan, which will include tallying the votes of the unsecured creditors in favor of accepting it, will be 9 a.m. Sept. 29 in the federal courthouse in Natchez.

If the court approves the plan following the confirmation hearing, the sale of the hospital will close Sept. 30, and Natchez Regional Medical Center will officially become a ward of CHS Oct. 1.

The president of the hospital’s board of trustees, the Rev. LeRoy White, could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. Hospital attorney Walter Brown was also unavailable for comment.

NRMC opened in 1960 as Jefferson Davis Memorial Hospital with federal, state and local funding backing its construction. The hospital has been financially independent since 1974.