OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — Supervisors met in executive session Wednesday with representatives of at least two parties interested in acquiring OCH Regional Medical Center.
The board spent almost two hours working through proposals from two legal teams representing potential buyers. Details beyond that are scarce, with District 3 Supervisor and Board President Marvell Howard declining even to specify how many parties submitted proposals.
“There were multiple. We were very pleased with the initial bidding,” he said. “Right now we’re moving forward with multiple bids. They’ve given us an overview of their intentions, and that did include some things favorable to Oktibbeha County, but at this point we’re not ready to disclose any specifics.”
That said, there were two law firms at the meeting, Raymond James and Butler Snow. Two regional medical groups confirmed interest in buying OCH earlier this year – Baptist Memorial Health Care and North Mississippi Health Services.
The county approved a request for proposals Jan. 13 outlining what it expected to see from serious buyers.
Those requirements included maintaining the Emergency Department as a Level III Trauma Center, keeping on staff for an unspecified duration, committing to charity care, working with Mississippi State University and planning capital improvements. It also asked bidders to repair “impaired service lines” such as gastroenterology, orthopedic surgery and otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat care).
Howard said all bidders met the minimum requirements and will move on to stage two of the process, where proposals will be refined and crafted into final proposals. Lawyers from the interested parties were already speaking with County Administrator Wayne Carpenter after Wednesday’s meeting to hash out details like insurance and budgetary expectations.
Howard said that he expects the refinement stage to go on for more than a month, with hopes of selecting a proposal May 25.
“The first phase was to identify potential bidders and move them into the second phase,” he said. “Now we’ll get a lot more detailed as to specifics, so that they will be able to formulate a final proposal for the county. That will be more due diligence and meetings with stakeholders, things of that nature.”
NMHS did not respond to a request for comment on this article. BMHC declined to comment before press time, as did the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which also might have met minimum requirements in the RFP.
Supervisors voted to move forward with the sale in September after Raymond James Financial Services presented results from a feasibility study detailing the hospital’s income, revenue leakage, physician recruitment and retention, debt profile, utilization and capital expenditures.
The study recommended the board sell OCH, specifically suggesting it look for a “strategic capital partner” with a commitment to share resources, expand available services and fund capital needs.
The supes failed in a 2017 attempt to sell the hospital, with voters overwhelmingly opting to keep OCH public. This time around, Mississippi State University and the Greater Starkville Development Partnership both publicly endorsed a sale, as did several local physicians, and a petition wasn’t filed to force an election.
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