Ina Jaffe, in “As Nursing Homes Evict Patients, States Question Motives,” NPR, May 26, 2017, uncovers a dirty little secret of the long-term care industry. Many managers in that business are willing to abuse residents and break laws to maximize profits.
Maryland is suing Neiswanger Management Services, or NMS Healthcare, for flagrant and massive Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The suit alleges that the nursing home company charged the state for services it didn’t deliver, specifically for discharge planning. Nursing homes are legally required to ensure that a discharged resident is transferred to a safe placement where he or she will receive necessary care. But the Maryland Attorney General says that NMS absorbed patients’ lucrative Medicare rehabilitation days then sent residents with complex medical needs to homeless shelters or to shabby rooming houses that they knew would abuse the residents and fleece them for their Social Security. The room-and-board homes where the patients were dumped additionally charged Medicaid exorbitant per diem rates. Many skilled nursing facilities try to maximize profits by squeezing patients out when their Medicare benefits are exhausted, but NMS managers and their accomplices lowered the bar to the level of organized crime.
Medicare pays skilled-care facilities about three times as much per day for rehabilitation as Medicaid does for nursing care. A well-run nursing home can make money on Medicaid long-term care residents, but not nearly as much as they rake in for Medicare patients.
We have seen the result in the banking industry when management shreds the rule book and requires staff to pursue profit without regard to any ethical, or even legal, standard. Wells Fargo put such extreme pressure on staff to open new accounts that representatives steamrolled customers into opening unnecessary accounts and resorted to fraud when the customers resisted. They would hoodwink customers into executing blank signature cards, then use the cards to open unwanted accounts. The sole objective was to open as many accounts as possible. Many Wells Fargo customers had their credit ruined and their financial security compromised by having multiple bank and credit-card accounts opened without their knowledge or consent.
When that rapacious management style is adopted by a nursing-home operator, the results can be even more appalling. NMS, a five-facility rehabilitation and long-term care chain in Maryland, is being sued by the state’s attorney-general for flagrant disregard of Medicare and Medicaid regulations and resident safety in its involuntary discharge policies. When the rehabilitation bed occupancy was at or near capacity, the discharge coordinators would resort to kidnapping to get the patients out on the 101st day, the point at which skilled-care benefits are exhausted. They would traffick the unfortunate victim out of town to the sleazy owner of a shabby tenement lacking in care staff and medication. Worse yet, many patients were dumped at homeless shelters, hospital emergency rooms, relative’s addresses, or even on the street. The AG’s complaint is a Dickensian catalogue of horrors.
It is difficult to find a principle or proposition that most people agree on. Vaccination is even a source of controversy. The one thing that nearly everyone over 65 will vehemently oppose is being placed in a nursing home. Baby Boomers and older folks are 99 & 44/100% likely to prefer vegetating at home in their own filth over going to a <shudder> nursing home. Despite that, according to the federal government, the most common complaint against nursing home operators is not bad food, lack of staff, poor care or abuse by staff or other residents. It is eviction – involuntary discharge.
As much as they hate going to a nursing home, most residents – particularly those with dementia – become accustomed to the routine and begin to trust the staff after a month or two. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but the prospect of being moved can be more stressful than the prospect of remaining in place. A change in location and caregivers can cause significant deterioration for a resident with dementia. Even those who are not mentally compromised suffer ill effects when moved without proper planning and social services. That is why an abrupt discharge on day 101, with no warning, is oppressive without regard to the placement. NMS did not just ignore the proper procedures for discharge, they carted the patients off to unfamiliar and unsafe surroundings and delivered them to scoundrels.
The legal restrictions and requirements of involuntary discharge are described in “Nursing Home Evictions.” A nursing-home resident has rights that can be enforced, with the assistance of an elder law attorney. Many rehabilitation, or skilled-care facilities that also have long-term care beds prefer to keep their beds filled with Medicare rehabilitation patients, not Medicaid long-term care residents. They will tell the patients’ families that they must move the patient at the end of rehabilitation because “they do not have an available Medicaid bed.” That is often a bluff to get the patient out so they can offer the bed to a more profitable Medicare rehabilitation patient. When the family has an attorney running interference on behalf of the patient the facility nearly always “finds” an available Medicaid bed at the last minute.
It is a pity that so many of NMS’s victims had no one to protect their rights. It is no less than criminal that the authorities ignored NMS’s abuse of vulnerable and elderly adults for years.
John B. Payne, Attorney
Garrison LawHouse, PC
Dearborn, Michigan 313.563.4900
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 800.220.7200
law-business.com
©2017 John B. Payne, Attorney
Off the Top o' My Head 