Nursing homes defrauded taxpayers out of $83 million, lawsuit says
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who has filed a lawsuit against the owners, said the owners and operators of four nursing homes siphoned off more than $83 million in taxpayers’ money and neglected residents. Wednesday.
“Again and again they put profit before people while reducing vulnerable New Yorkers to skeletons,” Ms. James said at a press conference on Wednesday, noting in an earlier statement that the nursing homes’ co-owners, Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler, had turned the facilities into “money-making machines,” “causing elderly residents and people with disabilities to suffer unscrupulous pain, neglect, degradation, and even death.”
The four nursing homes named in the lawsuit, filed following an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, are run by Centers Health Care, including two in New York City, Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Queens and Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation in the Bronx; as well as Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in White Plains and Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Buffalo.
The plans, in which the two owners embezzled Medicaid and Medicare funds, date back to at least 2013, according to the lawsuit, and include charging high rents to the nursing homes up to 233 percent higher than the rent reported to the State Department of Health. reported; transfer money to nursing homes affiliated with Centers Health Care in other states through unnecessary and interest-free loans; and paying large bills to companies owned by Mr. Hagler, Mr. Rozenberg and their families. In some cases, according to the lawsuit, it’s unclear what services, if any, these invoices were for.
According to the attorney general, the misuse of these substances led to a deterioration in care for nursing home residents.
Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesperson for Centers Health Care, denied the allegations in the lawsuit. “Centers Health Care is proud of its commitment to patient care,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “Centers strongly denies the New York Attorney General’s allegations and sought to resolve this case out of court. We will fight these false claims with the facts on our side.”
At the Martine Center in White Plains, a resident’s daughter found that staff members had neglected to give her mother an ostomy bag and instead wrapped her in a towel filled with feces, the woman told investigators.
At the same center, another woman told investigators that her husband’s untreated bedsores had turned into severe sores that had eaten away most of the man’s buttocks. As she began removing her husband from the nursing home, he developed sepsis and was hospitalized, but later died.
In Holliswood, a resident’s child called police after struggling to contact her mother both in person at the nursing home and over the phone. She later saw paramedics wheel her unconscious mother out of the nursing home and learned that her mother was undergoing surgery for a brain hemorrhage resulting from a traumatic fall. While removing her mother from Holliswood, the woman still suffers from speech impediments and emotional disturbances.
Relatives of Beth Abraham and Buffalo Center residents also reported other injuries from falls, as well as severe diaper rash and dehydration.
All four nursing homes received complaints of unsanitary conditions, pests, flies and lingering odors of human waste, the lawsuit said.
James is seeking to prohibit the four nursing homes from admitting new residents until they have hired a sufficient number of staff, hired people into positions designed to monitor the nursing homes’ finances and quality of care, reimburse the full $83 million and reimburse the Attorney General’s office for the costs of the investigation. This is the fourth lawsuit filed by James’ office against nursing homes.