Nursing Homes —
Our Parents and Grandparents… Our Seniors Deserve Better!
In November 2024, a moment of reckoning arrived but only after years of human suffering. The New York Attorney General secured a $45 million settlement with Centers for Care, LLC, the operator behind four nursing homes including Beth Abraham Center (Bronx), Buffalo Center (Erie), Holliswood Center (Queens), and Martine Center (Westchester).
The investigation revealed a brutal truth:
Centers’ owners diverted millions in taxpayer dollars, understaffed the facilities, and allowed neglect to spread unchecked. Residents endured unimaginable conditions, left unsupervised, forced to sit in their own urine and feces for hours, their basic needs ignored. Independent monitors have since been installed to ensure reforms, but for many, those interventions came tragically too late.
Those numbers, $45 million, four homes, shameful neglect are hard to digest. Yet the broader data exposes just how widespread the problem remains. As of July 2025, ProPublica’s CMS-based tracker shows 601 nursing homes across New York. In just the past three years, 91 have been cited for “immediate jeopardy” deficiencies, failures so dangerous they threaten lives outright. Meanwhile, 441 facilities suffered infection-control violations, $12.4 million in penalties were levied, and 22 homes faced payment suspensions. These figures are not mere statistics, they are evidence of systemic failure, of lives compromised by oversight that comes too late or not at all
Yet, this is not the whole truth. Those who work in these facilities, the CNAs, LPNs, RNs, are often the unsung heroes in a broken system. Despite inadequate staffing ratios, chronic burnout, and emotional trauma, they do their absolute best. They comfort frightened residents, administer medications, change soiled clothing, and try to fill the gaps that the system allows. But even their bravery cannot fix a system that permits neglect and masks it behind self-reported data.
Enforcement tools exist such as surprise inspections, Payroll-Based Journal staffing data, fines of up to $2,000 per day for violations, and federal star ratings but they often act as games of catch-up. Inspections get delayed. Complaints languish. Understaffing is blamed on labor shortages. These are not real excuses for risking lives, they are loopholes exploited until tragedy strikes again. And families? They become detectives tracking pills, documenting bruises, pleading for inspections as if exploiting bureaucratic fault lines were their job.
Yet we aren’t powerless. We have solutions ready to deploy: public dashboards that show staffing compliance, timely inspections triggered by staffing dips, stronger escalation protocols that enforce fines and suspensions swiftly, and robust oversight via ombudsmen with manageable caseloads. These aren’t radical ideas, they’re commonsense reforms that could prevent stories like the Centers tragedy from happening again.
At the heart stands a basic moral truth: nursing-home residents are not data points or profit centers, they are mothers, fathers, veterans, people with histories, hearts, and dignity. The $45M settlement was necessary, but it arrived after neglect had already done its damage. We need enforcement before tragedy and we need prevention, not penalties.
Staff do their best in impossible circumstances. Let’s give them a system that supports them, one that keeps residents safe. The tools are there. What’s missing is our political will and our collective outrage.