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State health officials are weighing whether to allow Royal Health Group to sell its 10 Massachusetts nursing homes, including one in Fairhaven, to a group of newly formed companies known as AuthentiCare.
Elder advocates and family members of Royal residents say they’re concerned about the potential sale because there’s very little public information about AuthentiCare. The company has no website or public contact information. It hasn’t publicly shared details on its owners or managers. Its companies are registered at various addresses around the country, from Southern California to Delaware to New Jersey.
“We don’t know what their financial status is, what kind of company they are,” said Jim Lomastro, a healthcare expert and elder advocate with Dignity Alliance Massachusetts.
Lomastro and others raised those concerns at a virtual hearing held by the Department of Public Health on Thursday. Now, health officials must take those concerns into account as they decide whether to grant AuthentiCare permission to buy the chain.
Royal of Fairhaven Nursing Center, a 107-bed facility at 184 Main St., is among the nursing homes slated to be sold.
Royal Health Group owns a dozen nursing homes in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Pembroke-based chain cares for roughly 963 residents each day, public data shows. Some of its facilities are rated as underperformers on Medicare’s nursing home rating system, but most are rated as average or above-average. The chain is owned by James Mamary, Sr., according to public filings.
Mamary could not be reached for comment. Royal Health Group did not return messages The Light left with the company via supervisors at its nursing homes and via a web form on its website on Friday and Monday.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health supervises nursing home management transitions and can block them or require the new operator to agree to certain conditions. A separate review process is ongoing in Rhode Island for the sale of Royal’s two nursing homes in that state.
The deal has been in the works since at least late June, when public health officials received official notice from AuthentiCare. Health officials haven’t yet released public records with details on the proposed sale.
AuthentiCare’s chief operating officer, Avrohom “Shaya” Rotberg, gave a brief, upbeat presentation on the company’s plans for the chain at Thursday’s hearing. He said the company would improve the chain by making “significant investments” in buildings and tech, though he didn’t go into detail.
The new management company would keep the existing employees and residents where they are, and there are no plans to close any nursing homes or reduce their capacity, Rotberg said.
Rotberg said he had 15 years of experience managing nursing homes. A public LinkedIn profile that appears to belong to Rotberg lists past positions managing various nursing homes in New Jersey and a recent position as an executive at a large New Jersey-based nursing home chain. He became COO of AuthentiCare this May, the LinkedIn profile says.
The deal’s projected closing date is Sept. 16, Rotberg said at the hearing.
Voicemails left with phone numbers listed for AuthentiCare and two other potentially associated businesses on Friday afternoon and Monday morning were not immediately returned.
AuthentiCare Health Centers LLC was incorporated in Rhode Island in June, business records show. Its publicly listed manager is ACHC Manager LLC, which was incorporated in Delaware in May and Massachusetts in July.
Families and advocates have concerns
Nina Jorgensen said she’s feeling anxious about the sale.
Her mother moved into Royal Health Braintree earlier this summer. In an interview, Jorgensen said she has been happy with her mother’s care so far, but she became worried when she heard the company was being sold. Her concern grew when she tried searching for information on AuthentiCare online.
“There’s nothing at all, and that really alarmed me,” she said.
Jorgensen still had doubts after Rotberg’s brief presentation on Thursday — she said it didn’t sound sincere. Before health officials approve the sale, Jorgensen said she wants them to make sure that AuthentiCare won’t reduce staff hours or take other shortcuts to lower costs.
Other family members of Royal residents who spoke at Thursday’s hearing said they were also concerned about entrusting their loved ones to an unfamiliar new management company.
Elder advocates who follow the Massachusetts nursing home industry closely had similar concerns. The public information available about AuthentiCare is “scant and confusing,” said Paul Lanzikos, co-founder of Dignity Alliance Massachusetts and the state’s former elder affairs secretary.
Lomastro, the healthcare expert also with Dignity Alliance, said in an interview that it’s important for regulators to consider whether the company has a track record of running nursing homes responsibly, and whether it has enough money on hand to usher the chain through the transition without compromising care.
“I have concerns about whether they will put enough money into the facilities to turn them around,” he said.
The alliance has pointed out that some Royal nursing homes are failing to meet targets for quality care. At the end of last year, just two of Royal’s 10 Massachusetts nursing homes met both of the state’s state staffing minimums, and half of them failed to meet the state minimum for spending on direct care. Royal of Fairhaven Nursing Center was out of compliance with both staffing minimums and the spending minimum.
Closing those gaps will require financial investment, the alliance said. Lomastro said the company would also need cash on hand after the sale to keep facilities running as billing transitions from the old chain to the new one.
The elder advocates say there isn’t enough public information about AuthentiCare to tell whether the company has the resources to meet those needs.
What happens next
The Department of Public Health now has until Nov. 6 to make a decision on how to proceed with AuthentiCare’s proposal, with a possible one-month extension, according to an email from spokesperson Katheleen Conti.
Officials must weigh public feedback as part of that process, including testimony at Thursday’s hearing and written comments submitted to HFLLicenseAction@mass.gov.
This is at least the second major nursing home sale health officials are evaluating this year. The troubled Next Step Healthcare chain may soon sell many of its facilities after they entered receivership for millions of dollars in unpaid rent in February. The department hasn’t yet held a hearing for that proposal.
Stricter scrutiny of nursing-home sales still not in effect
State lawmakers tried two years ago to strengthen the state’s review of sales like these, but health officials have stalled the effort
The landmark long-term care law, signed September 2024, gave health officials broader authority to evaluate the track record of new operators based on their legal history, finances, and history of providing medical care. It also required new operators to give notice to workers and provide details on their owners to regulators.
But the state Department of Public Health still has not finalized its proposed regulations to make the new process part of its standard procedures. The department is currently following procedures that predate the new law, according to Conti.
This means that, two years after the long-term care law went into effect, the department may soon allow two nursing home chains to sell their facilities to new owners without the more rigorous review that legislators decided was necessary before the sales were proposed.
The department currently has no timeline for finalizing the regulations. When The Light asked Gov. Maura Healey about them in an exclusive interview last week, she said her instructions to all state agencies on finalizing regulations are to “get it done yesterday.”
“I don’t know the exact date, but I know how important it is to get those finalized,” she said.
This reporting was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
