Hohenwald, Tennessee — A Middle Tennessee health company has agreed to pay more than $2 million to the federal government and the state to settle allegations that one of its nursing homes spent five years billing Medicare and Medicaid while delivering care so deficient it barely qualified as care at all. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee announced Monday that American Health Companies — doing business as American Health Partners — will pay $2,090,309 to resolve False Claims Act liability tied to Lewis County Nursing and Rehabilitation, a 131-bed facility in Hohenwald that operated as AHC…
Author: Ahuva S
WASHINGTON — The federal government just launched the most sweeping healthcare fraud enforcement action in American history — and nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities are directly in the sights of prosecutors. The U.S. Department of Justice announced what it’s calling the “2025 Takedown” on Monday, charging 324 individuals — including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other licensed medical professionals — in connection with more than $14.6 billion in alleged fraud against Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health programs. The action more than doubles the previous record of $6 billion set by an earlier DOJ Health Care Fraud Strike…
Washington, D.C. — House Republicans are weighing a new round of reductions to federal health care spending, this time to help fund a $200 billion budget request tied to the ongoing U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran. For nursing home operators, the prospect of additional Medicaid cuts lands on top of wounds that haven’t healed from last year. According to reporting from Axios on Monday, top House Republicans are looking at health care offsets as part of a reconciliation package that would cover the Pentagon’s war funding request. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told the outlet, “There’s other items we’re looking…
Researchers at UC San Francisco have uncovered a long-sought explanation for why nursing home residents and other older adults so often end up in the hospital — and sometimes on ventilators — when they catch the flu or COVID-19. The answer, it turns out, is buried in the lungs themselves. A study published March 27 in the journal Immunity found that aging lung cells can trigger a runaway immune response that overwhelms the body — not because the infection itself is unusually severe, but because the lung’s own tissue is primed to overreact. What the researchers found The UCSF team,…
Salt Lake City, Utah — A man in a Millcreek nursing home made three suicide attempts over 13 months. He left the facility on his electric scooter each time, and police intervened each time. According to federal inspection records, staff gave him just two psychosocial evaluations during his entire stay and failed to arrange mental health services — even as his records showed a clear pattern of worsening suicidal behavior. It wasn’t an isolated failure. A review of thousands of pages of federal inspection reports found at least 18 incidents since 2019 where Utah nursing facilities were cited for failing…
Des Moines, Iowa — For rural nursing homes, telehealth has stopped being a luxury. It’s a lifeline — and one that could disappear at any moment. That’s the message nursing home operators and long-term care advocates are sending to lawmakers in 2026, as they push for permanent telehealth authority that doesn’t depend on temporary government waivers. The stakes couldn’t be clearer: when those waivers lapsed during last fall’s 43-day government shutdown, providers across the country had to choose between delivering care they weren’t sure they’d get paid for, or pulling back on services residents couldn’t afford to lose. Most chose…
Virginia Beach, Virginia — A nursing home that lost its Medicare and Medicaid funding last summer after regulators declared it unsafe is still accepting patients — and newly obtained records show state officials privately recommended denying its license renewal before reversing course. Princess Anne Health and Rehabilitation Center in Virginia Beach had its federal certification terminated in August 2025, a rare and drastic action that can effectively force a facility to close. But while the federal government pulled funding, state regulators allowed the facility to keep operating under a consent agreement, a first-of-its-kind arrangement for a Virginia nursing home. Now,…
Long Island, New York — More than half of the nursing homes on Long Island are operating at a financial loss — and the gap between what it costs to care for a Medicaid resident and what the state actually pays keeps widening. That is the central finding in a new analysis by Stuart Almer, president and CEO of Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center and one of the most prominent voices in New York long-term care. The numbers are stark: Long Island nursing homes lose an average of $85 per Medicaid resident, per day. Medicaid — the program that…
Sunnyside, Washington — Certified nursing assistants at six nursing homes across Washington state are casting ballots this week on a tentative contract that would bring wage increases of 8% to 11% over two years — a deal union leaders say addresses a staffing crisis that’s been building for years. The agreement was negotiated between SEIU 775 and PACS, the corporation that operates all six facilities. According to the union, negotiations stretched nearly a year before the sides reached a tentative deal. Voting runs from Thursday, March 26 through Monday, March 30. The facilities covered include Sunnyside Healthcare Center in Sunnyside,…
A new bill introduced in both the House and Senate this week would do something that nursing home reform advocates have demanded for years: strip Medicare funding from every nursing home owned and operated by a private equity firm in America. That would affect more than 400 facilities nationwide. What the Bill Would Do The legislation was introduced Monday by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), with co-sponsorship in the Senate from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Under the bill, any nursing home or hospital that is currently owned or operated by a…
