Natchez Regional Medical Center’s long, lingering death is nearly over.

Like a former NFL star who has aged and withered away from his once top form, a slender and ailing Natchez Regional was sold last week for arguably a fraction of its true worth.

In a couple of weeks, the judge overseeing the hospital’s bankruptcy will decide whether or not the sale is allowed. Most people familiar with the bankruptcy seem to think the judge’s approval is almost a certainty.

When the hospital has finally breathed its last breath, hopefully the county or the state will call for an autopsy.

Like most deaths, we know the ultimate cause — heart failure. In a hospital, the heart is a working business plan, the circulatory system is the administration and the blood is cash — even for a non-profit hospital such as Natchez Regional, cash is needed to pay the bills.

For all practical purposes, the hospital’s fate was sealed more than a year ago when its administrative circulatory system collapsed. Apparently administrators, either knowingly or ignorantly, allowed the business side of the hospital to spiral out of control.

The result is that county’s once mighty hospital bled out astonishing amounts of cash over the last two years.

The hemorrhaging was so bad that it doesn’t even end with the sale. The only way to make the sale happen was for the county agree to borrow millions of dollars just to help cover the liabilities that could potentially come in the next year or two as the hospital fades into history.

How all of this happened depends largely on whom you ask.

Hospital administrators, when they talked, pointed to the tough nature of being a small, independent hospital facing ever-changing federal regulations and reimbursements.

Effectively, they’ve said Obamacare was to blame.

While it certainly was a factor, the hospital’s demise doesn’t seem that simple.

Other hospitals across the country — even independent ones — have managed to weather the storm without filing for bankruptcy.

Worse still the hospital’s downward spiral occurred in spite of a huge “gift” that fell from the sky. The gift was a windfall of approximately $9.8 million in settlement money after the hospital sued its former management company.

Perhaps that wad of cash gave administrators a false sense of security — like the rush of a shot of morphine can take away pain, at least temporarily.

Beyond that possibility, it’s almost difficult to imagine how month after month administrators stood by as the hospital bled more and more cash and nothing — at least nothing significant or explained publicly — was done to stabilize the patient.

Administrators allegedly continued to spend money on physicians who were not bringing in more money than they cost the hospital’s foundation while not paying things like rent or the company operating the hospital’s cafeteria.

In the last month, the public learned unsecured creditors — essentially everyone except the state bond holders and banks that let the hospital borrow money — likely will only receive pennies on the dollars they are owed.

Last week, hospital employees learned the status of their retirement payments over the last 10 months are in question, too.

At the end of the day — regardless of whether or not an autopsy is performed — the only people who will come out of this death with a breath of life are those, ironically, paid to plan its funeral by guiding it through the bankruptcy process and courts.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.