The final three former Skyline Healthcare nursing homes placed in receivership in Massachusetts have closed.
The properties in New Bedford, Fall River, and Dighton, Mass. formally closed Friday, according to a report from the Providence, R.I.-based CBS affiliate WPRI.
All of the residents had found new places to receive care, Bedford Village nursing supervisor Grace Williamson told the station, with workers receiving their final paychecks.
“It’s been an emotional four weeks,” Williamson said. “I feel people were raced out of here. It was a real chaotic attempt to get everyone out of here.”
The other two properties involved in the receivership action — Bedford Gardens and Rockdale Care and Rehabilitation Center — closed earlier this month, bringing Skyline’s troubles in Massachusetts to a formal close.
The office of Bay State attorney general Maura Healey moved to place the homes in receivership in late April, appointing KCP Advisory Group LLC to take over on a contingency basis amid a host of problems that included unpaid wages, dangerously low staffing levels, and an inability to pay vendors.
The move came only a few days after Skyline agreed to surrender its licenses to operate the five nursing homes.
“At least one facility has been put on notice that its food service vendor will no longer deliver food starting tomorrow — April 30, 2019 — due to nonpayment,” Healey noted in her office’s petition for receivership. “Another facility has run out of milk for its residents. Staff at the facilities do not have access to respondents’ bank accounts and administrators in charge of paying wages and vendors’ bills for critical services have not responded to the Commonwealth or their own staff.”
Skyline’s collapse in states across the country has now stretched on more than a year, as officials and investors continue to clean up the messes left behind by the chain of more than 100 skilled nursing facilities. The Wood Ridge, N.J.-based operator had emerged from seemingly nowhere to become a dominant player in the nursing home industry across the Midwest, but frequently failed to pay its vendors and employees — creating waves of receiverships and closures in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Massachusetts.
The now-defunct chain was most recently in the news again for a hangup in the transfer of 17 Skyline SNFs in South Dakota from a receiver to Cascade Capital Group of Illinois.
MidCap Financial claimed that the transfer would prevent the lender from recovering money it’s still waiting to receive from Skyline; a judge is scheduled to hear the case next week.
“Twelve months ago, plaintiffs told the Court that if MidCap would simply show some ‘patience for the patients,’ plaintiffs’ use of MidCap’s collateral to fund the operations of the nursing homes would end, and MidCap would be made whole,” MidCap argued in its objection to the deal. “Instead, money owed to MidCap has continued to be used to fund failing operations for the sole purpose of preserving the value of plaintiffs’ real property.”
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