Natchez Regional Medical Center was officially sold Thursday, pending a bankruptcy judge’s approval later this month.

But it appears the hospital’s employees were sold down the proverbial river well ahead of Thursday’s sales auction.

After many of the hospital’s employees were told months ago not to worry about the fate of their retirement funds, employees found out late last week the assurances were disingenuous.

Apparently, the bankrupt county hospital’s financial administrators have deducted the employee portion from payroll checks properly. They sent that money to the Mississippi Public Employee Retirement System, but failed to pay the hospital’s required match since November 2013.

At the March bankruptcy filing, the amount due was approximately $450,000. That was presumably for only five months. Six months have passed since then, so doubling the original figure owed is probably a good estimate of what is currently owed. That means the total owed to the employee retirement plan may be at or approaching $1 million.

For this to have occurred not through some kind of accident, but through sheer and utter negligence, is unforgivable.

The hospital’s employees deserve better treatment. Instead they find out far after the fact that their retirement — in addition to their jobs after the hospital is sold — has been shorted.

All the while, the hospital shelled out big bucks to attorneys and hospital sale experts.

We urge bankruptcy judge Neil Olack to consider the employees who are going to be harmed due to others’ negligence and seek to make the hospital or the county responsible for keeping them whole when it comes to their retirement.