trouble continues at the state's nursing homes two more long-term care facilities are being suspended from New Jersey's Medicaid Program after Regulators cited poor Care at the facilities and evidence of massive Medicaid fraud in several New York nursing homes under the same owners the depford and hamon centers for rehabilitation and Health Care will be dropped from the state program on May 24th suspension from Medicaid payments typically forces a facility to be sold or closed but this announcement carries extra weight since it comes just weeks after the state suspended two other nursing homes for more on what it means and how it'll affect patients I'm joined by Laurie Brewer, New Jersey's long-term care ombudsman care ombudsman ombudsman Laurie Brewer good to have you on the show your reaction first of all to this announcement that the state is going to drop both depford and hamon from Medicaid payments well I think you know one of the issues that we have in long-term care in New Jersey across the country is that we have what we suspect to be quite a bit of profit taking in this industry and as we all know uh most of these long-term care facilities make their money from Medicaid and also from Medicare so they're essentially public funded there aren't a lot of private pay residents and long-term care facilities in New Jersey or across the country and so we have a couple of facilities here run by the same owners who are notorious in the state of New York who are uh are are being charged with a number of very very very serious uh practices in the state of New York that resulted in extremely poor care there and they own two two places in New Jersey and those places just happen to have had some recent terrible surveys and they tend to be the lowest uh rated facilities uh year after year after year they've both been cited repeatedly for for health and safety violations as you mentioned on a federal level they have I believe it's one star uh in terms of their surveys and their ratings so how have they been allowed to continue operating the fact is that the regulatory system for nursing homes in the state of New Jersey and every state in the nation is constructed by the federal government carried out by the state and so what happens is that these long-term care facilities are cited sometimes their admissions are curtailed often they have to pay fines but the fact is that for some of these providers um and this is a recognized issue in long-term care um paying fines is the cost of doing business what's the more direct impact for the patients under their care both of these facilities have you know a couple hundred beds each what does it mean for them well I think what happened uh and what is happening in some facilities in northern New Jersey is instructive here because what can happen is that that the um the debarment from the Medicaid Program is attached to the owners it is not attached to the facility itself so in as much as those owners perhaps sell or transfer ownership then the Medicaid uh department does not apply to the facility at all so what is happening in some other places is that the facilities are being sold for now nothing should really change for the residents but this you know we I think there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes and we're going to have to see where this really where this goes how do we look at this big picture Lori when as a resident perhaps someone with a family member in any one of the facilities throughout the state we see continuously that these facilities are being cited um that there are accusations of of fraud um and that also it appears anyway uh that the allegations that come out are pretty serious about the conditions in these homes what are we left to believe then I think that there is a very real uh Staffing challenge in long-term care facilities um and there are many excellent facilities in the state of New Jersey but there are some facilities that are notorious not just here but also in other states and their finances are relatively hidden from us so what we need in this state and something I've been pushing for for two years is greater transparency into the finances of many of these long-term care facilities and there is a bill that has been introduced in the legislature by Senator Joe Vali that would Endeavor to do that and I think we really need to push for that now Lori Brewer is the um buds person for New Jersey's long-term care facilities Laurie always good to talk to you thank you Briana take care bye [Music] bye