On June 28, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the owners, operators, and landlords of four nursing homes for years of repeated and persistent fraud and illegally misusing more than $83 million in taxpayer money that resulted in significant resident neglect, harm, and humiliation.
The nursing homes, owned and operated by Centers for Care LLC, doing business as Centers Health Care, include Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing (Martine Center) in Westchester County. Residents at these facilities were forced to sit for hours in their own urine and feces, suffered from severe dehydration, malnutrition, and increased risk of death, developed infections and sepsis from untreated bed sores and inconsistent wound care, sustained life-changing injuries from falls, and died.
Following an investigation by the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), the lawsuit alleges that the nursing homes’ owners and operators converted more than $83 million in Medicaid and Medicare funds to enrich themselves, their families, and business associates through an elaborate network of related companies and collusive, fraudulent transactions, rather than use the funds for their intended purposes of providing sufficient staffing and required resident care. To stop further harm and suffering, Attorney General James is seeking to prohibit the nursing homes from admitting new residents until staffing meets appropriate standards, to implement a financial monitor and a healthcare monitor, and to disgorge any and all wrongfully received government funds.
“Nursing homes are meant to be safe spaces where the most vulnerable members of our community receive the care and dignity they deserve. Instead, the owners of Centers Health Care allegedly used these four nursing homes — and the vulnerable New Yorkers who lived there — to extract millions of dollars for their personal use, leading to elderly residents and those with disabilities suffering unconscionable pain, neglect, degradation, and even death,” said Attorney General James. “Rather than honor their legal duty to residents to provide the highest possible quality of life, Centers leadership and their associates seized every opportunity to put personal profit over resident care. My office will always protect and defend nursing home residents statewide, and I encourage anyone who has witnessed disturbing conditions, neglect, or abuse at a New York nursing home to contact my office.”
Martine Center is a 200-bed facility in White Plains. Centers Health Care is co-owned by Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler.
The lawsuit alleges a pattern of residents not receiving adequate care and suffering neglect, mistreatment, and humiliation as a result of the owners, operators, and landlords depriving the nursing homes of over $83 million intended for resident care. Due to insufficient staffing, staff members were often unable to assist residents with basic activities of daily living, such as help using the bathroom, getting in and out of bed, eating, and maintaining personal hygiene. Call bells were routinely ignored or unanswered, residents were forced to sit in their own urine and feces for hours, meals were not provided in a timely manner, and personal belongings were lost or stolen, including hearing aids, dentures, clothing, and even an electronic piano. Residents, family members, and staff reported unsanitary conditions, including neglected food trays, vermin, flies, and persistent smells of human waste.
The horrors endured by the nursing homes’ residents began well before the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted from Rozenberg and Hagler repeatedly operating the facilities with insufficient staffing in order to increase their own profits. Allegations of mistreatment, neglect, and humiliation at the nursing homes detailed in the lawsuit include:
A woman at Martine Center appeared to be in pain while she was visited by her daughter. When the daughter pulled her mother’s hand out from under her blanket, it was covered in feces. The daughter found that her mother, who used a colostomy bag, was wrapped in a towel filled with feces and without a colostomy bag. When she unwrapped the towel, she saw her mother’s exposed intestines and the surrounding area covered in feces. While staff attempted to clean her mother, she complained that the area burned, and when they were done, there was still visible feces smeared around the wound.
Another resident at Martine Center did not receive adequate care for his bed sores. When his wife visited in October 2021, she was shocked to find that his wounds had progressed to Stage III and Stage IV ulcers, one of which was eating away most of his buttocks. His wife began the process of having her husband removed from Martine Center to be cared for at home. Before she got the chance to bring him home, he developed sepsis, was hospitalized, and died.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated the deficient resident care and poor working conditions that resulted from Rozenberg and Hagler’s decisions. Under the added stress of the pandemic, the nursing homes’ already-tenuous management model snapped, leading to devastating consequences.
At Martine Center, the Assistant Director of Nursing (ADON) continued to report to work after exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 in early April 2020, telling her colleagues that she did not want to abandon them while they were so understaffed. On April 17, 2020, she punched out of work at Martine Center for the last time. By April 21, 2020, she was hospitalized and tested positive for COVID-19. She died in the hospital a few weeks later.
Throughout the pandemic, while both residents and staff died, suffered, and were otherwise neglected, Rozenberg and Hagler denied the nursing homes’ administrators’ requests for more staffing, fewer resident admissions, and salary increases for overburdened staff.
Attorney General James encourages anyone with information or concerns about alarming nursing home conditions, or resident abuse or neglect to file a confidential complaint online or call the MFCU hotline at (833) 249-8499.
The MFCU’s (Medicaid Fraud Control Unit) total funding for federal fiscal year (FY) 2023 is $65,717,936. Of that total, 75 percent, or $49,288,452, is awarded under a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $16,429,484 for FY 2023, is funded by New York state. Through MFCU’s recoveries in law enforcement actions, it regularly returns more to the state than it receives in state funding.
