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The Healey administration plans to move forward next month with regulations to implement a two-year-old law that directed the state to consider out-of-state issues when weighing a nursing home license. The announcement came on the heels of a media report that faulted the state’s oversight of nursing home transactions.
The Department of Public Health has finalized the regulations to implement the 2024 law and plans to bring them to the Public Health Council on Oct. 14, the administration said late Monday.
A Boston Globe Spotlight investigation published Monday reported that the Department of Public Health has not denied a nursing home acquisition or revoked a license in at least seven years, stretching back to the latter years of Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration.
Over that period, DPH repeatedly approved purchases by RegalCare, a New Jersey chain whose owner acknowledged a personal role in a Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme when he agreed to a settlement with state and federal prosecutors last week. The owner also told the state on numerous applications that he had never had a license revoked, though his license was revoked by New Jersey in 2018, the Globe reported.
The Globe story also detailed how the quality of some of RegalCare’s homes in Massachusetts has deteriorated since the company took over, with homes in Quincy and Taunton dropping from five-star ratings from the federal government to one-star ratings.
The Light reported in September that Sweetwater, the potential buyer of 11 nursing homes owned by Next Step Healthcare, has been accused by California prosecutors of deliberate, systemic understaffing. The sale was still under review as of Sept. 25, according to a Department of Public Health spokesperson.
State health officials recently approved AuthentiCare, a newly formed company with no track record, as the new owner for 10 Massachusetts nursing homes that were owned by the Royal Health Group chain, The Light reported this month. The state did not require AuthentiCare to agree to any conditions, which elder advocates had demanded. The Light reported in its August story on AuthentiCare that the stricter nursing home regulations called for in the 2024 law had stalled.
When The Light interviewed Gov. Maura Healey in August, the governor did not have a timeline for the new nursing home rules or an explanation for the delay. But she said her instructions to state agencies on regulations are to “get it done yesterday.”
“I want to make sure, as governor, that anyone who is putting a loved one in a nursing home knows and feels that their loved one is going to be well cared for,” Healey told the News Service in New Bedford on Monday, when asked if she was comfortable with DPH’s record of license approvals, including for RegalCare.
Healey pivoted to talk about the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where more than 75 veterans died of COVID-19 after the facility failed to appropriately manage the pandemic. She described her administration’s steps to open a new facility in Holyoke that “got a perfect rating” from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I want the same thing for all of our nursing home facilities, which is why I put forward the strongest regulations,” the governor said. “I think those regulations will bring the kind of accountability to the nursing home community across Massachusetts, and we’re going to continue to be really vigilant about that and get those out the door and make sure that we’re holding everybody accountable. I want everybody to be safe.”
The long-term care oversight law that Healey signed in September 2024 directs the Department of Public Health to weigh an operator’s out-of-state record and litigation when deciding whether to approve an acquisition.
“See, the important thing about my regulations — they’re new; and before the regulations, they didn’t have the power to do certain things. Now they do, and that’s the important thing,” Healey said Monday. “So going forward, we’ll have the ability to do that scrutiny and to hold people accountable and to hold bad actors accountable.”
The regulations are not yet in effect.
Healey’s office said the 2024 law expressly directs the Department of Public Health to consider a nursing home operator’s in-state and out-of-state quality history, criminal history, civil litigation, financial capacity, ownership and management-company history, and private equity involvement when weighing a transaction.
Management companies are currently subjected to suitability scrutiny, the administration said, and the 2024 law requires continuing disclosure of significant changes in financial status, including receivership, bankruptcy, defaults and liens.
The Light contributed reporting.
