State seeks emergency caretaker for Cold Spring Hills, revocation of nursing home license

The state Health Department has asked a Nassau judge to appoint an emergency caretaker to operate Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in Woodbury, Long Island's second-largest nursing home, as the state seeks to revoke its operating permit, citing conditions that are “dangerous to the life, health, or safety of residents," according to court filings.

The state's request, the first in 15 years, according to records, comes as 440 Cold Spring Hills employees face the loss of their health care benefits by Oct. 15 as the nursing home has refused to make permanent payments to a National Benefit Fund — a move that has spurred more than 130 workers at the already understaffed facility to seek new jobs, quit or retire, records show.

In a Sept. 8 court filing, Health Department Commissioner James McDonald said the state has begun administrative proceedings to revoke the facility's operating certificate, adding that a caretaker, or temporary manager, must be put into place to operate the 588-bed, for-profit facility, improve resident care and pay its staff, including all health care benefits.

The filing is part of ongoing civil litigation, initiated by State Attorney General Letitia James in December, alleging that the owners and management of Cold Spring Hills diverted more than $22.6 million in Medicaid and Medicare funds for residents' care by using a fraudulent network of a dozen companies to conceal upfront profit taking.

Cold Spring Hill's refusal to fully fund its employees' benefits plan "create(s) a present instability of its labor force that threatens the health and safety of its residents" and constitutes conditions "which are dangerous to the life, health, or safety of residents," McDonald wrote. 

James' lawsuit includes affidavits from loved ones of the nearly 600 residents living at Cold Spring Hills who allege care has dropped precipitously in recent months.

A Halesite man, whose brother has Parkinson's disease and has lived at Cold Spring Hills since 2021, wrote that staffing is the lowest he's ever seen it.

"Due to lack of staff, my brother sits in a dirty diaper for most of the day," he wrote, adding that his brother went without a shower for two weeks over the summer because of a lack of hot water. "He is supposed to be changed every three hours."

State Supreme Court Justice Lisa Cairo scheduled an Oct. 2 hearing on the Health Department's application, along with a request by the attorney general for the court to appoint both an independent health care and financial monitor to oversee the facility's finances until a permanent operator is installed.

Attorneys for Cold Spring Hills did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The last time the state sought receivership of a nursing home was in 2008 during a monthslong strike at Kingsbridge Heights Care Center in the Bronx, records show.

Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, an advocacy group for nursing home patients, said a temporary caretaker at Cold Spring Hills is needed desperately. 

"This facility has a history of substantial violations of minimum care standards and basic resident rights," Mollot said.

It's not immediately clear what type of entity could be selected as a caretaker, although experts said it likely would not be a for-profit institution. 

A Health Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Shortly after James' office filed its lawsuit last year, Cold Spring Hills stopped making payments to the National Benefit Fund of 1199 SEIU, the union that provides health care benefits to nursing home employees. Cold Spring Hills has made a series of partial payments to the fund, most recently $500,000 on Sept. 14, extending the termination of benefits date to Oct. 15.

Cold Spring Hills has refused to provide assurances of future payments, officials said, prompting at least 30 employees to quit and more than 100 others to seek new jobs, said Timothy Rogers, vice president of the union's Nursing Home Division.

"We would hope and plan that any potential receiver coming in is going to work with the union to secure the benefits for workers," Rogers said.

The company continues to owe more than $4.2 million to the fund, and is obligated to make monthly payments between $920,000 and $1.1 million, court records and union officials state.

"The remaining staff is facing, and will continue to face, a heavier workload and increased stress from worrying about whether they will have health and related benefits, depressing morale, and reducing the ability of the staff to care for residents," Brian Steinwascher, special assistant attorney general, wrote in a Sept. 18 court filing.

" … Respondents’ conduct thus will directly result in additional staffing shortages — and likely a staffing emergency. As the nursing home’s staff is already overburdened, respondent's conduct is substantially increasing the risk of harm to the nearly 600 vulnerable nursing home residents," Steinwascher wrote.

In another affidavit in the lawsuit, a Locust Valley man told the court that his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, uses a wheelchair and has lived at Cold Spring Hills since 2015, was left in her bed for an entire weekend in August because of a lack of staff. He wrote that she no longer consistently receives her medication on time and that in May was left on the toilet for 80 minutes "because there was not enough staff to help her get up."

The attorney general's suit, filed in December, named more than a dozen defendants, including Bent Philipson and Benjamin Landa, longtime nursing home magnates who had amassed by 2020 — along with their family members — interests in 163 facilities across 18 states, including the purchase of Cold Spring Hills in 2016, according to Medicare records. Also named were Philipson’s son Avi and Landa’s daughter Esther Farkovits, who the suit alleges were “straw owners, put in place to conceal their fathers’ control.”

The lawsuit came 28 months after Newsday’s investigation exposed the impact of the pandemic on the Cold Spring Hills residents, families and staff. The investigation also revealed the facility’s place in the owners’ collection of profit-making nursing homes.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.