State and receiver clash over next steps for Benjamin Healthcare Center

When leadership from the Edgar Benjamin Healthcare Center met with representatives from the state in court on Dec. 5, the topic of what’s next for the Mission Hill nursing facility, which faced a potential closure in the spring, dominated the status conference.

For Roxbury attorney Joseph Feaster, who took over as court-appointed receiver of the facility in April, the conference was an opportunity to petition for an extension of the receivership, a step he said is important as he looks to identify if the center can stay open in the long term.

His involvement, he said, is helpful not in the day-to-day operations of the center, but the oddities of trying to bounce back from a former administration that in its closing days faced numerous allegations of financial mismanagement.

“From the operational side, [the center’s leadership team] can do it,” Feaster said. “This other stuff is new to all of them, and they need someone like myself.”

But attorneys for the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and Department of Public Health said they’re looking for increased clarity on the situation at the Edgar Benjamin, as well as how Feaster plans to see the receivership wind down.

“I think there is work to be done, but I do think that there has to be a plan to achieve a termination of the receivership,” Mary Freeley, who leads the attorney general’s Elder Justice Unit, told Justice Anthony Campo, who presided over the conference.

The conference was the latest step in an ongoing process to improve and support operations at the facility after the center’s former administrator, Tony Francis, said in February that he intended to close the facility due to “insurmountable financial challenges.” In the preceding months, the center had repeatedly failed to pay employees, a trend which intermittently continued until the receivership was put in place.

The move was met with pushback from community members and local officials. That effort led to the ousting of Francis when family members of residents at the Edgar Benjamin sued for a court-appointed receivership. The Department of Public Health and Attorney General’s Office — the two state entities with the ability to call for a receivership — initially declined to pursue the action, but both ultimately signed on after the suit was filed.

The status conference was scheduled following a request from the Attorney General’s Office and the Mass. Department of Public Health for more frequent and detailed updates. In a court filing Oct. 9, the Attorney General’s Office asked for the conference with the intent of seeking more detailed information regarding the financial actions of the facility — which it said was provided for in the court order that originally put Feaster in the role — as well as long-term plans regarding the extended viability of operations or a need to shutter the facility.

That request followed a report by Feaster in June providing a summary of his work at the facility between his appointment and its filing. That report offered limited details regarding the facility’s financial status.

Another report filed by Feaster, Dec. 3, gave more insight, describing about $6.6 million in income received by the facility since he took over in April, as well as $772,000 in unpaid expenses.

While the report breaks down the income sources into four categories, the unpaid expenses were reported only as one lump sum. That breakdown of expenses is something Freeley said the state wants more clarity on during the conference.

At the status conference, Feaster rejected the ability of the state’s executive branch to push for greater oversight of the receivership, pointing instead to the fact that in his role he officially reports to the courts — a position he has held throughout his tenure.

It was a message echoed by Oren Sellstrom, litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights, who represented the family members who sued for the receivership, when he emphasized that it was the court, but they would welcome greater insight.

“Whatever additional detail the court feels appropriate, we are fully supportive of,” Sellstrom said. “We want to see this as a win-win situation”

But, increasingly, the financial status of the Edgar Benjamin is set to become a more pressing issue. As Feaster has worked to stabilize its operations over the past nine months, MassHealth provided the facility with almost $313,000 in advances which it is now seeking to get back at a rate of $50,000 per month starting in January.

That expense, Feaster said, would threaten to undo some of the work that has been done to gain stability.

Instead, he said he would like to see MassHealth simply defer the recoupment — postponing it until the facility is on what he would see as more stable ground — or to place a lien on the property, which the facility owns without a mortgage.

But the Attorney General’s Office said that if the state were to consider postponing recoupment of the funds, it wants more information about how the money has been used.

“The receiver has asked that we not [recoup the MassHealth advances,]” Freeley said at the conference. “We need some more information as to how these funds are being expended, and why recoupment is not feasible.”

Ultimately, the status conference ended without any significant decisions.

Feaster and the family members of residents at the Edgar Benjamin who initially sued for receivership arrived at the courtroom with a request to extend the receivership through the end of June 2025. Meanwhile, the state was still pushing for more information from Feaster in an updated report and a better sense of what the path toward the end of the receivership might look like.

The receivership was initially set to run for 90 days from its early April start — about through the end of June 2024 — but the court already agreed once to extend the oversight role through the end of the year.

Earlier in his tenure as receiver, prior to the first extension, Feaster said in an interview with the Banner he wouldn’t be surprised if receivership ran past its original 90-day timeline, citing his prior experience serving as receiver at Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center, a role he held for about five years.

According to Feaster’s most recent report, since April, the facility has seen a rise in its census from about 70 residents to 81. The facility currently can host up to 92 residents.

The report also said that under the center’s current management — alongside Feaster, the facility is currently led by administrator Delicia Mark, who was hired in May — residents have seen improvements in everything from general care to increased activities and celebrations.

And the center has also taken steps to account for financial documentation of the facility’s actions, especially under its previous administration. That work has included going back and filing financial documentation with the federal government that has gone unfiled since 2019.

Feaster said that, in assessing the state of the facility, the staff has found some “irregularities.” For some of those, he said, the center is considering lawsuits to attempt to get some of that money back.

All that generally puts the Edgar Benjamin Healthcare Center in a position that Feaster said could put the facility in a place to stay open long-term — a question that has haunted the nursing home since Francis, its former administrator, said continued operations weren’t feasible — but Feaster offered his assessment with some asterisks.

In his December report, he said that the Edgar Benjamin and its staff are “organizationally and financially” able to continue but there are some caveats he thinks are needed for long-term operations, largely around how the state is interacting with the facility.

“If the Court has said, ‘Receiver Feaster, do you think that this facility can go forward?’ My answer would have been, ‘Yes, however, your Honor, this would need to be put in place, support from the Commonwealth,’” he said.

His focus, he said, was largely on the conversation around the recoupment of the MassHealth advances as well as outstanding debts the facility has from before he took over as receiver, like unpaid water bills and unpaid fees to vendors the Edgar Benjamin works with.

Feaster said that, in his mind, steps toward ending the receivership would largely mean business as usual, with a few additional steps like looking to put together a board of directors for the facility.

By the end of the conference hearing, Campo sent both parties away to do some homework with plans to return two weeks later, at another status conference Dec. 19. From the state, he asked for the specifics that they’re looking for from the receiver; from Feaster, he wanted a sense of what that plan to wrap up the receivership might entail and what timeline he might look for.

When asked by the Banner, Freeley declined to offer more information regarding what details the state is seeking, and instead said she’d wait for that information to be released in the official court filing.

Though, so far, Campo made no official judgement on the request to extend the receivership by six months, he said he’s inclined to approve it once he had the additional information he requested.

“If we’re headed in the right direction, the court certainly doesn’t want to derail that,” Campo said at the hearing.