7 nursing homes settle with state over unsafe conditions

BOSTON — Massachusetts officials have announced settlements with seven nursing homes after a state investigation into complaints of unsafe conditions and substandard care.

Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey says "systemic failures" at the facilities led to injuries and deaths of residents.

Betsy Crane was 89 years old when investigators said she fell for the 20th time inside Beaumont Rehabilitation in Westborough.

"Our mother, Betty Ford Crane, affectionately called Betsy, would not want anyone to die in the manner that she did," Candi Htichcock told Boston 25 News.

Crane’s daughter said Betsy slowly bled to death, and passed away in the Summer of 2015. Nearly four years later, the attorney general’s office announced the results from a statewide investigation that found several nursing homes were mistreating and neglecting their residents.

"These facilities had systemic failures that led to significant harm in some cases death to residents," Healey said Wednesday.

The seven homes combined will pay more than $500,000 in fines and have agreed to update their procedures and improve staff training. Among cases cited by Healey was that of an elderly woman who fell 20 separate times at one facility and eventually died from internal bleeding.

Synergy Health Centers, which owns two of the homes, has also agreed not to participate in state-run health care programs for seven years.

Healey says every senior has the right to quality care and every family deserves peace of mind about their loved ones.

All of this is small consolation to Candi Hitchcock and her family, who believe Betsy Crane suffered an unnecessarily painful death.

"This whole situation is just so frightening to me that I want it resolved," Hitchcock said. "My mother would not want anything like this to happen to anybody. It was just horrible."

Associated Press