NATCHEZ — The shroud of mystery around Natchez Regional Medical Center’s financial demise permeated the hospital’s hallways and clouded lines of communication, several employees said this week.

Speaking on a condition of anonymity, employees say the bankrupt hospital has operated for some time with little communication between its administration and management. As a result, department heads did not know the content of their internal budgets, and questions about finances led to ostracism.

One employee said they did not know how the now-bankrupt hospital has able to keep track of money spent because individual departments have been operating without budgets for some time.

“You just send in a request (for supplies) as needed,” the employee said. “You don’t know how much money you have (in your budget).”

Another NRMC staff member said they did not know how many employees were budgeted for their department.

“I don’t know how many employees I am paying for, or if I am even paying for (another department’s) employees,” the staff member said.

The hospital administration has not had department head meetings in more than a year, one department head said, and the first inkling some employees got that the hospital was headed for bankruptcy was the same day it was publicly announced.

“Managers and employees did not know the bankruptcy was coming,” one employee said. “With the previous bankruptcy (in 2008), we were warned beforehand. I didn’t know about (the March bankruptcy filing) until the same day it came out in the newspaper.”

In some instances, repairs to the facility haven’t been made when they were needed and may have impacted patient care, including a broken sprinkler system and air-conditioning units that needed fixing, a nurse said.

When infrastructure issues or questions of how money was being spent were brought up to the administration, one employee said, “We were called troublemakers.”

Despite an apparent lack of transparency and communication between the top echelons of administration and those on the floors caring for patients, one manager said employees “have managed to do a tremendous job of caring for our patients through this.”

Community Health Systems, which owns Natchez Community Hospital, has agreed to purchase Natchez Regional, pending approval from the bankruptcy court later this month.

The employees collectively said the CHS transition team has been transparent about how the hospital will operate and has already taken steps to address some of the issues that have contributed to the hospital’s financial losses.

“In some way, they’re a breath of fresh air,” one employee said. “They have come in and said, ‘This is what we are going to do.’”

CHS represents the hope that the hospital can be run professionally, another employee said.

NRMC filed for bankruptcy in March, but the facility has continued to lose money since then.

CHS was officially awarded the purchase of the hospital at a single-bidder auction last week, though it had entered into a purchase agreement for the facility with Adams County several months ago.

The purchase still has to be approved by the federal bankruptcy court overseeing the case. The approval hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29 in Natchez.