Some of that money allegedly came from mortgage proceeds. Since the start of 2015, owners of the Villages of Orleans diverted more than $18.6 million, or more than 20% of the facility’s operating budget, pocketing that amount as “up-front profit,” the New York attorney general alleged. Early this year, Lahasky told MarketWatch that “all you hear about is the bad stuff,” adding that “nobody hears about the average facility” where residents get all the care they need. Lahasky did not respond to requests for comment. ![]() “The regulatory and oversight system has not kept up with the increasing sophistication of the nursing home industry,” said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a nonprofit resident advocacy group. The CMS database still lists Fuchs as the sole owner of the Villages of Orleans. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency overseeing nursing homes, released new nursing-home ownership data in September, aiming to improve information on facilities under common ownership. One individual, Bernard Fuchs of Nassau County, NY, was listed as the facility’s sole owner in regulatory submissions, whereas in fact he was a silent, minority partner who testified that he had never even visited the Villages of Orleans, according to the complaint. Department of Health and Human Services on the Villages of Orleans investigation, she said.ĭetails in the complaint also shed new light on the challenges facing regulators as they seek to hold owners accountable for the quality of nursing-home care, which is largely taxpayer-funded through Medicaid and Medicare. A major addition to that portfolio came late last year, when Lahasky acquired Diversicare Healthcare Services, which operates more than 60 nursing homes.Īsked whether James is investigating any other facilities affiliated with Lahasky, a spokeswoman for the attorney general said, “our nursing home investigations are ongoing.” The attorney general’s office worked closely with the U.S. Lahasky testified that he owns several hundred nursing homes, including three in New York, according to Attorney General James’s complaint, which names Lahasky as a defendant. ![]() The case compounds the transparency and care-quality concerns that have surrounded the fast-growing nursing home operations of Lahasky, which were the subject of a MarketWatch article earlier this year. The consequences for the 100-plus residents of the Villages of Orleans Health and Rehabilitation Center in Albion, NY, were devastating, according to the complaint, as the understaffed and poorly maintained facility deprived them of essential medical care and basics such as meals, hygiene and hot water. The facility’s owners diverted funds intended for resident care to increase their personal profits, New York attorney general Letitia James alleged in the complaint, in part by causing the nursing home to pay inflated rent and management fees to related entities and using the facility as collateral to cash in on multimillion-dollar loans. The lawsuit involves a single New York nursing home allegedly controlled by Long Island nursing home investor Ephram Lahasky and his partners.
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