Philly's largest nursing-home owner sells all its facilities
"There's been a sea change of ownership," one observer says. Mid-Atlantic Health Care, which became the largest operator of Philadelphia nursing homes when it purchased five facilities from NewCourtland in 2011, has sold its holdings here.
Mid-Atlantic Health Care LLC, the largest nursing-home operator in Philadelphia, has sold its facilities here, along with one in Montgomery County it bought for $39 million in 2014.
The sale closed May 30, Scott Rifkin, Mid-Atlantic's chief executive, confirmed Wednesday. He said he was not prepared to comment further. The price was not disclosed.
The buyer was MIMA Healthcare, of New Jersey, according to SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, a union that represents thousands of licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants at 108 nursing homes in the state.
Included in the sale are Care Pavilion, Cliveden, Maplewood, Tucker House, and York, all in Philadelphia, and Parkhouse in Royersford.
Mid-Atlantic and its real estate partner in 2011 bought the Philadelphia facilities, which have 1,176 beds, or 16 percent of the city's nursing-home capacity, for $75 million from NewCourtland, a Philadelphia tax-exempt organization.
The Mid-Atlantic sale adds to a string of large divestitures by Pennsylvania nursing-home operators. Extendicare sold 20 facilities in 2015. Last August, Reliant Senior Care, of Eddystone, sold 22 facilities. In several transactions, Golden Living sold the operations of 36 facilities in four separate transactions in October and February, keeping the real estate. Nathan Stern, of Lakewood, N.J., sold seven nursing homes on Feb. 1, including Ivy Hill in Wyndmoor.
The biggest sales have been by operators under a cloud of regulatory and legal pressure, but that does not seem to be the case with Mid-Atlantic.
"There's been a sea change of ownership," said Matt Yarnell, president of SEIU Healthcare of Pennsylvania.
It is hard to know who's who in many of these deals because of complicated webs of partnerships.
"It would be helpful if there were transparency around funding of the organizations. We know that when there's profit, there are winners and losers," Yarnell said.
The corporate name MIMA Healthcare LLC is registered in Cherry Hill, where the company has a nursing home called Avista Healthcare, according to its website. Other facilities listed on the website are Crystal Lake in Bayville, N.J., Wardell Gardens in Tinton Falls, N.J., and Crescent Manor in Bennington, Vt.
MIMA Healthcare officials could not be reached for comment.
The New Jersey Department of Health website lists Gabrielle Treff and Mordechai Treff as officers for Avista. Crystal Lake and Wardell Gardens have larger lists of officers, but Mordechai Treff, who is a licensed New Jersey nursing-home administrator with a Brooklyn address, is common to all three.