New York State convicted the owner of the Heritage Nursing Home of Athens, PA, of first-degree grand larceny and three counts of second-degree grand larceny. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said David Arnold and the home failed to provide dental care, occupational and speech therapies and other services to hundreds of patients between 1991 and 2000, but billed New York state Medicaid for the treatments. Most of the home’s residents were from New York.
“Not since the dark days of the nursing home scandals of the 1970s has my office confronted a nursing home whose greed has so blatantly overridden common decency,” Spitzer said. “This owner callously put a vulnerable and impoverished population at risk by not delivering needed health services.”
Arnold will be sentence March 15. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison, and a minimum of 1 to 3 years. The corporation also faces fines that could be twice as much as the home allegedly siphoned, an amount that has yet to be calculated by the judge.
