NY’s Landmark Nursing Home Settlement Fell Short. Here Are 4 Findings From Our Investigation.

Last week, New York Focus published an investigation into Centers Health Care, a notorious nursing home chain with several dozen facilities in New York state. We found that a landmark $45 million settlement between Centers and New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2024, meant to curb abuse and neglect at four especially poor quality homes, has fallen short, and residents have continued to suffer. 

And despite a plank of the settlement meant to protect patients in the chain’s other facilities, levels of care have fallen in multiple homes, coinciding with serious harms to residents. 

Here are four key findings from that investigation:

1. THE SETTLEMENT WAS SUPPOSED TO FIX UNDERSTAFFING AND POOR CONDITIONS AT FOUR NURSING HOMES. BUT IN ONE, BOTH PERSIST.

Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, a facility in Western New York, was one of the four homes specifically targeted by the attorney general’s lawsuit. One condition of the settlement was that Buffalo Center provide at least 3.5 hours of nursing care per patient, per day — a number significantly below the federally recommended minimum of 4.1. 

Even so, the facility has fallen short of this goal on at least 82 days since the settlement. During that time, patients have suffered falls, flies crawling on their bodies, verbal abuse, and nonconsensual photography while exposed.

2. LEVELS OF CARE HAVE DECLINED AT OTHER CENTERS HEALTH CARE NURSING HOMES SINCE THE SETTLEMENT. 

While the settlement primarily targeted four specific nursing homes, it also barred Centers from reducing levels of care at its other facilities as a response to the cost of complying with the settlement.

But staffing records analyzed by New York Focus show that nursing care has dropped at multiple Centers Health Care facilities since the settlement. Those drops have coincided with serious incidents including falls, injuries, and in one case, death of a resident after medical staff failed to administer CPR. Three times, staff initially failed to report the incidents to state authorities, in apparent violation of state law.

3. FINES LEVIED AGAINST THE CHAIN HAVE MADE LITTLE DIFFERENCE.

Centers Health Care has faced federal and state fines of more than $340,000 total since the settlement, but with Centers facilities making millions of dollars a year each, experts say the fines likely aren’t large enough to force the company to change course. “These companies are making so much money that the fines just don’t mean anything to them,” said Charlene Harrington, an emeritus professor of sociology and nursing at the University of California, San Francisco.

4. IT’S NOT CLEAR WHETHER THE ATTORNEY GENERAL WILL TAKE FURTHER ACTION. 

So far, Centers has not faced consequences for its apparent violations of the 2024 settlement. The deal allowed the attorney general to reopen the lawsuit or seek to impose additional fines if Centers violated its terms, but so far neither of those things has happened. Last month, the term of a court-appointed independent monitor charged with improving health conditions at the targeted nursing homes expired, and the attorney general’s office is not seeking to extend it, a spokesperson said. Another monitor, who was appointed to oversee the nursing homes’ finances, will remain in place until $10 million remaining in a “resident care fund” established by the settlement is depleted, the spokesperson added.