ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Federal authorities are shutting down a Rochester nursing home after years of documented problems, and elder advocates say it took too long to get here.
For days, News10NBC’s Deanna Dewberry has been digging through Department of Health documents. News10NBC investigations have documented many residents who family members say suffered severe neglect while living at Waterview Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing. Elder advocates say complaints of neglect and abuse are not new.
In 2022, an employee was convicted of raping a resident. Going back further, the earliest CMA rating available for the facility was from January 2020, giving the nursing home, then called The Shore Winds, one out of five stars, which means much below average.
The Department of Health has a number of tools to encourage nursing homes to improve conditions. They can inspect them more often, appoint a manager to oversee the facility and appoint a quality control manager. They did all of those things, and Waterview did not improve.
Elder advocates say the way to get the attention of bad nursing home operators is to hit them financially. “We hold the owners and operators at fault because they’re there to do a job. They’re not just there to collect a paycheck for a person being in a bed,” said MaryDel Wypych, chair of the Elder Justice Committee of Metro Justice.
“But we also hold the New York State Department of Health accountable because they provide the oversight of the nursing homes,” the advocate said.
Money speaks volumes to bad nursing home owners. “They need to incur meaningful fines and then collect those fines,” said Wypych.
While the state assessed a fine last year for $666,000, before that, the public records available show only a fine for $10,000. But a state law that went into effect in 2018 gave the New York Department of Health another tool to wallop the wallets of poor performing nursing homes. It mandates reductions of Medicaid reimbursements.
Public records available show that from at least 2022 to 2025, the state withheld 2 percent of the payment for each resident on Medicaid, $3.69 per patient per day. For example, in 2022 Waterview, then called Shore Winds, had 119 residents on Medicaid.
If you multiply that by 365 days, the nursing home billed Medicaid for 43,486 days. So that 2 percent penalty cost the facility more than $160,000 in Medicaid payments. In 2023, the penalty was even more costly, more than $175,000.
“They were cited many many, many times and things were not improving. So, was there any motivation on the part of the owners to change things?” said Wypych
But in this case, withholding $175,000 in Medicaid funding did little to inspire change. News10NBC reached out to the Department of Health about the matter, but DOH spokespeople only confirmed receipt of the email.
In the meantime, Waterview had a deadline of Friday to get the Department of Health a closure plan. The Department of Health has not confirmed whether they’ve done that.
Waterview employees have reached out to News10NBC saying other nursing homes have reached out to offer jobs. But those homes are one-star facilities, and they fear working conditions will be no better than Waterview.
Consumer Investigation: Advocates ask, Did DOH do enough to protect Waterview residents? WHEC.com.
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