Editor’s note
At the request of Dignity Alliance Massachusetts, a public hearing has been scheduled on the proposed change of ownership of eight facilities owned by Bear Mountain (Bear Mountain at Andover; Belvidere Healthcare Center, Lowell; Chestnut Hill of East Longmeadow; Bear Mountain at Reading; Sixteen Acres Healthcare Center, Springfield; Bear Mountain at Sudbury; Bear Mountain at West Springfield; Bear Mountain Worcester) to Vantage Care.
Call in: Thursday, September 18, 2025, 6:00 p.m.
Phone: 888 324 9683
Passcode: 8677550
Written comments by 12:00 a.m. on September 19, 2025 to:
Department of Public Health
Division of Health Care Facility Licensure and Certification
Attn: Licensure Unit Coordinator
67 Forest Street
Marlborough, MA 01752
By email: HFLLicenseAction@Mass.gov
Questions to Walter Mackie at Walter.Mackie@Mass.gov
Nursing home care turmoil: quick profits and quality concerns
Boston Globe, September 7, 2025, By Kay Lazar
Black water from broken pipes seeped through the kitchen floor of a nursing home in Reading for months this summer, with workers scrambling to keep the muck from contaminating serving dishes and food.
At a sister facility in Andover, one of two elevators has not worked for a year, and the ancient air conditioning system struggled to keep up with heat waves. Residents have rarely been served fresh vegetables recently because the food service staff is shrinking and they now don’t have enough time to prepare them.
“There’s not enough people to pull the job load,” said one food service employee in Reading, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “Everyone is giving their notice and leaving, and others have had their hours cut.”
The shortcomings reflect broader problems at the nursing homes owned by Bear Mountain Healthcare: half its eight homes have the lowest inspection ratings by regulators.
Now, with its business in receivership, the Bear Mountain homes are poised to be sold to another chain that also has a spotty record with regulators, including a higher number of problems discovered during inspections, and lower ratings on the quality of care at their own nursing homes.
The pending deal epitomizes a pattern that advocates find concerning: nursing homes in Massachusetts and across the country are being bought and sold at a rapid pace, in what critics say are deals engineered more to make a quick profit than to build a successful long-term business. Fueling the frenzy is an increase in elders with complex health conditions that require skilled nursing care, and a shrinking number of facilities able to provide that care. Elder care advocates say state regulators need to more closely scrutinize prospective buyers and warn that the quality of care for the thousands of residents in these facilities is at risk.
“A lot of this happens in total silence and behind closed doors,” said Scott Harshbarger, a former state attorney general and now a principal at the Massachusetts Guardianship Policy Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for people who are unable to care for themselves “These are often unbefriended people, who have no voice, and they are inside homes where the employees are reluctant to blow the whistle.”
The prospective buyer of the Bear Mountain homes, a New York chain named Vantage Care, declined to comment on its plans for the Bear Mountain facilities, but issued a statement that said it is working diligently to repair facilities and improve conditions that it inherited at the eight nursing homes.
“Vantage Care’s entry into the Massachusetts market is driven by a long-term commitment to providing stability, quality care, and a supportive environment for both our residents and our dedicated staff,” the statement said.
But Vantage Care is among those operators that have been active in the market for nursing home properties. In quick succession, it bought four homes in Massachusetts in 2022 and 2023 and then quickly sold them; one, in South Hadley, sold for $2.7 million more than it had paid just one year earlier.
“This industry is more about cash flow than it is production,” said David Kingsley, a former Kansas University Medical Center professor who founded the Center for Health Information & Policy, a health care research and advocacy nonprofit.
“They sell these properties like baseball cards,” Kingsley said.
One reason may be the amount of money surging into nursing homes. Paul Lanzikos, a former Massachusetts secretary of elder affairs, said the state has added more than $340 million in supplemental funding to nursing homes since 2023, in addition to higher Medicaid payments to facilities, but has failed to tie the money to specific mandated improvements, such as minimum staffing ratios.
“Instead, [the money] was dropped into a fragmented system with for-profit chains, private equity, and management companies already circling for opportunity,” Lanzikos said. “This attracted more financial actors into the space, each trying to bite off a piece of the new money,” he said.
At least 34 Massachusetts nursing homes have closed since 2020, reflecting a national trend as the industry struggles with acute staffing shortages and more consumers seeking home and community-based alternatives. But the shrinking supply of nursing homes has paradoxically created a seller’s market as more people live longer with complex health problems that can’t be cared for at home.
Kingsley said that’s helped fuel a rapid buying and selling of nursing homes as companies use substantial tax deductions, such as interest payments and depreciation on their buildings, to realize quick profits.
A number of recent reports have also concluded that many nursing homes reap profits by squeezing efficiencies and lowering the quality of their food, housekeeping, and other services, while also notching gains by paying sister companies inflated prices for management and additional services.
In addition to running its own homes in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Vantage Care has been operating the eight Bear Mountain facilities for the past year after that company was forced into receivership by its landlord. Bear Mountain was behind on rent, utility bills, payroll expenses, and Medicaid money it owed the state, according to court documents.
And over that time, state inspectors flagged troubling conditions at the Bear Mountain facilities overseen by Vantage Care.
At the facility in Reading, inspectors in November said the nursing home placed residents in “immediate jeopardy” of harm because it had not updated health care plans, nor notified the building’s lone social worker for nearly a year after a depressed resident had to be hospitalized following a suicide attempt.
At another nursing home in Worcester, state inspectors in February found residents in “immediate jeopardy” of serious infections because of lax practices by nurses cleaning and changing bandages around a patient’s tracheostomy. The nursing home was also the subject of a scathing report by a nonprofit legal advocate last year that found rodent infestations, low staffing, and resident neglect.
Federal and state health department inspection records of the Bear Mountain facilities, including the periods before and while they were managed by Vantage Care, show four had a one-star rating, the lowest possible score in a five-star system, and three were judged to be average. Just one was rated above average, at four stars.
A lawyer for Bear Mountain Healthcare declined comment.
In its statement, Vantage Care said it recently fixed the water seepage at the Reading facility and ordered parts for the non-working elevator at the Andover one. It also said the company was in the midst of “several large-scale [air conditioning] projects this summer across the entire portfolio of homes.”
The response from Vantage did not address other issues uncovered by the state inspections, as well as the low overall rankings of its facilities.
“We are proud of the positive impact we have made in these communities and positive results will become more apparent over time as we make additional investments,” Vantage said.
Aside from the Bear Mountain facilities, Vantage Care owns four other nursing homes in Massachusetts and one in Connecticut.
Inspection reports for those facilities, as well as at the four others in Massachusetts it sold, show Vantage Care too scored below average. Federal regulators rank quality of care at Vantage nursing homes at just 2.4 stars, compared to an average of 3.4 stars at other homes nationally.
Vantage filed notice in early August with the Massachusetts health department that it intends to acquire the eight Bear Mountain homes.
The state health department declined an interview but said in a statement that it is reviewing Vantage’s request.
Several advocates said what is known so far about Vantage Care is concerning, given the current landscape for nursing home care in Massachusetts.
“A number of facilities that have changed ownership over the past half dozen years have been ‘out of the pot and into the fire’ because the new owners are worse than the previous ones,” said Lanzikos, who cofounded a group called, Dignity Alliance Massachusetts that is working to improve long-term care.
A worker who recently resigned from the Andover nursing home said Vantage Care was so slow to repair critical items, such as call lights residents use to signal for help, and the air conditioning system, that he worried about the quality of care going forward. “I am scared to see what’s going to happen for the future‚” said the former employee, who asked to remain anonymous because he fears speaking publicly might harm him professionally. “I didn’t want to be there for that.”