New York Attorney General Recovers $45M from Nursing Homes and Secures Major Reforms to Prevent Patient Neglect and Abuse
Even after repeated exposés of patient neglect and abuse at nursing homes, residents remain vulnerable. Unscrupulous operators seeking to maximize profits from Medicare and Medicaid dollars continue to understaff and overcrowd their facilities, leaving elderly and incapacitated patients without proper nutrition or the ability to maintain personal hygiene or human dignity.
Late last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a state-of-the-art settlement with the operators of four nursing homes where such abuses had allegedly occurred for years. The settlement is designed not only to recover defrauded government funds paid to the nursing home operators, but to ensure that residents receive proper care in the future. The four homes – owned by Centers for Care LLC and located in Buffalo, the Bronx, Queens and Westchester – will pay $45M, most of which ($35M) will directly fund improved resident care.
Attorney General James also alleged that the nursing home operators engaged in multiple schemes to steal tens of millions of taxpayer dollars intended for patient care, including collusive real estate deals, loans with inflated interest rates, and inflated salaries for work that was not performed.
Importantly, an Independent Health Care Monitor will oversee and direct needed reforms to quality of care, staffing levels, supervision, and training; and an Independent Financial Monitor will oversee the homes’ finances. The nursing home operators are prohibited from closing or selling the facilities for at least three years.
The settlement also requires Centers for Care LLC to hire a Chief Compliance Officer and Facility Compliance Officer at each nursing homes to ensure full compliance with laws and regulations governing patient care.
Getnick Law has long championed structural reforms designed not merely to recover ill-gotten gains but to alter the playing field so that the wrongdoing cannot recur. Since the 1990s, Getnick Law has played a key role in the development of the independent monitoring concept and has undertaken several high-profile monitorships, including oversight of the World Trade Center clean up after 9/11 and the New York Racing Association. Attorney General James is to be congratulated for her visionary approach to protecting the health and well-being of New York’s most vulnerable residents.
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