THE EDGAR P. BENJAMIN Healthcare Center, a Boston home to roughly 70 Black and Latino seniors, is on the verge of shutting down, which would make it the nineteenth nursing home in Massachusetts to close voluntarily since 2021.
Residents, family members, and employees are worried a July 1 closure is a foregone conclusion – but are still fighting to delay the shutdown to give residents more time to find new placements (they say nearby nursing homes have months-long or years-long waits amid capacity challenges). The organization Lawyers for Civil Right filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging the facility has been mismanaged and calling for a judge to order a receivership, where the state would bring in a new operator.
“We’re concerned that our residents’ needs won’t be met if additional facilities close,” said Emily Shea, a commissioner of Boston’s Age Strong Commission, at a hearing on the Benjamin last week before the Department of Public Health, which has until April 9 to rule on the nursing home’s closure plan.
Nursing home closures have become more commonplace, particularly in New England. A 2023 study in the Journal of Health Affairs Scholar found New England, along with the south central region of the US, saw the highest rates of nursing home closures from 2011 to 2021. Shea said Boston has lost about 175 long-term care beds in recent years.
The Benjamin’s financial woes are part of an industry trend, but the nursing home also has had its own unique problems, some of them self-inflicted it would appear.
Nursing home leaders often blame closures on financial challenges – and low occupancy can stress balance sheets. Indeed, the Benjamin home was built for over 200 beds, but only 70 residents live there currently.
Still, employees like Leslie Henderson, the Benjamin’s director of admissions, said focusing on the home’s potential capacity is misleading. For starters, a Roxbury charter school paid $869,256 in 2020 alone to rent part of the nursing home, according to a cost report filed with the Center for Health Information and Analysis. Henderson also wants officials to investigate how the nursing home has managed a recent influx in federal funds, including $4 million in stimulus funding reported in 2020.
Tony Francis, the current CEO and board president of the Benjamin facility, has stirred controversy. He got the job in 2014 and a year later his salary was $206,742, according to a 2015 cost report. By 2020, his salary was up to $723,217 and his entire compensation package, including pension, exceeded $932,000, according to a 2020 cost report.
The nonprofit nursing home’s board of directors has dwindled from 13 in 2015 to three members currently. Former board member and state lawmaker Royal Bolling Jr. told Boston 25 he was voted off the board for raising questions about Francis’s pay.
Boston 25 also obtained board meeting minutes indicating the nursing home lost $100,000 in a crypto exchange – and that board members approved paying back Francis at 12 percent interest for his loans to the nursing home. The nursing home also owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue utility bills, according to Boston 25.
Marise Colsoul, director of nursing at the Benjamin facility said at least 20 patients have seen significant weight loss since December – and she points to the lack of a regular, on-site dietitian. The nursing home ran out of colostomy bags at one point, and staff resorted to wrapping an elderly resident in a towel to prevent feces from spreading everywhere, according to the Lawyers for Civil Rights lawsuit.
Nonprofits in Massachusetts are overseen by the attorney general’s office and any nonprofit with more than $500,000 in annual revenue is required to file audited financial statements.
A 2019 audit found the Benjamin home was facing ongoing financial challenges in 2017 that “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue.” The audit found “inadequacies in the organization’s accounting records” and said the home’s future depended on management’s “plans to increase revenue and decrease expenses.”
Nursing homes must submit annual cost reports to state and federal authorities, but those reports don’t have to be audited. Under state regulation, the state’s Center for Health Information nd Analysis “and the MassHealth agency may conduct desk audits or field audits to ensure accuracy and consistency” of cost reports.
A spokesperson for the Center for Health Information and Analysis said the agency has not conducted an audit of the Benjamin nursing home’s cost report at any point over the last decade.
Paul Lanzikos, co-founder of Dignity Alliance Massachusetts, said the lack of financial auditing is troubling – particularly when lives, and millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, are on the line.
“If the financial oversight was being done properly by the state agencies, they would have caught the mismanagement of funds much earlier,” Lanzikos said.
Sharon Magnus, who works at homeless service provider Pine Street Inn, said her mother, who lives at the Benjamin, asked: “‘Can I get a bed where you work at?’”
“‘Ma, you don’t want to stay here,’” Magnus recounted answering. “‘I’m not gonna allow you to.’”
Marina Villenueve is a freelance writer who previously worked as an investigative producer at Boston 25.