Recently I’ve posted about horror stories that have happened as investor-driven chains get into hospice (here) and nursing homes (here). More broadly, nursing homes and assisted living are called long-term care, aka LTC.
For our mother and family, LTC has meant Less Than Caring. Last night, I posted My family’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company, starting with this:
As many of you know, my mother died in October. What we haven’t disclosed until now is that it happened in horror story #3: she passed after a single week of “respite care” provided by the local outlet of a growing chain of assisted living facilities.
Many people asked who it is, and we’re ready to say: the chain is Integracare, and the local facility near Mom’s home in Annapolis is Bay Village.
Here’s how they advertise themselves. It does not in any way match our experience.
There could not be a bigger fraud than for them to claim to “improve the quality of life” for anyone. As my post yesterday said, they were severely understaffed, to the point where my nearby sister didn’t dare leave Mom alone overnight and slept on the kitchen floor every night (this is care??). Then Integracare told us they had considered charging her for being an overnight guest but would graciously waive the fee.
Is this the kind of company to whom you want to entrust your elders?
The terrible problems and Integracare screw-ups we experienced are not limited to Bay Village. Investigating them after Mom died, I found this from another family whose father died at their Candle Light Cove facility in Easton MD:
The company’s Twitter account didn’t even acknowledge her tweet. (All they do on Twitter is chat with an investor named Dodai Neil.)
Brief company history: founders retire and trouble starts
According to their website Integracare was founded in 1999 in Wexford, PA (near Pittsburgh) by Rick Irwin and Loriann Putzier. After twenty years, in a long planned transition, just as COVID hit, Larry Rouvelas took over as CEO, according to this interview last August with The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC).
In their first 20 years they’d grown to 11 facilities. Then the push for growth started.
- A May 2021 blog post said they then had 13: Bay Village and nearby Queenstown Landing had just opened in March. Also opening in this timeframe, in Maryland, was Candle Light Cove in Easton, noted in the bereaved tweet above.
- Their October 2021 blog post said they had 15 locations; it appears they’d just acquired two facilities in Pennsylvania.
- As of today the website says 18 locations in PA (13), MD (3), VA (2).
So after 11 locations in 20 years, they’ve added seven in three years. And based on our family’s experience in yesterday’s post, their management and quality are out of control.
The push to climb the rankings
As I said yesterday, all the company’s PR is about their efforts to climb the rankings of biggest companies in the industry. Those rankings are published by Argentum. I dug through the published reports I could find and tracked down these numbers of what’s happened since Integracare’s founders retired. Updated to include 2023-24 data. The boldfaced 2022 numbers were the latest rankings when all this happened.
| Report PDF | Data from | Integr. Rank | Loca- tions | Total units | Assisted Living | Indep Living | Memory Care | Employees |
| 2024 | 12/2023 | #103 | 17 | 1473 | 974 | 156 | 343 | 971 |
| 2023 | 12/2022 | #109 | 16 | 1317 | 753 | 341 | 223 | 1014 |
| 2022 | 12/2021 | #99 | 15 | 1291 | 884 | 164 | 243 | 824 |
| 2021 | 12/2020 | #117 | 11 | 932 | 577 | 163 | 192 | 585 |
| 2020 | 12/2019 | #119 | 11 | 932 | 581 | 164 | 187 | 600 |
Last May [2022] Integracare invested in their future (ahem) by hiring a new VP of Development, Acquisitions, and Capital Expenditure “responsible for company growth through the acquisition of additional communities and new project development.” So: we see what their priority is – more expansion, not doing what they’re already being paid to do.
Do your own research
If you’re considering assisted living of any sort, and want to evaluate a facility, start by studying the company who owns it. Clearly if you look at the Integracare home page or Bay Village’s, the picture you’d get is drastically different from what happened to us. Same for BV’s happy Facebook page.
All the Integracare info I’ve shared here came from simply googling. And I suggest you find out if the company you’re considering is focused on growth: look them up in those linked PDFs from Argentum.
One friend whose mother died miserably in another chain facility told me about her mother’s horrible, wailing pain (she’d installed a webcam in her mom’s room) at a facility owned by Harbor Chase, the #36 ranked company. They were #48 in 2020; during the pandemic they added 550 more units (apartments).
Read the publicity, but don’t take it at face value. In that August 2022 investor interview, CEO Rouvelas said this: “For residents and families, an example of how we operationalize our mission is to make sure we answer call bells in a timely way.” If you’ve read our story and our 7 page complaint letter to them, you know what a cruel lie that is.
People like this must be stopped. In the absence of government regulation and enforcement, our only remedy is informed consumers (that’s you) who spread the word.
When I walked into Candlelight Cove on August 12, 2022 at 5:30 pm ; it was a ghost town w/door propped open for the DoorDash driver. (The facility later said they propped it open for me). There was not a sign of any resident or staff until I found a door labeled “Life stories”.
My dad and the majority were locked in their rooms. I got a little panicky when the aide couldn’t find the key to open my dad’s door. I asked her what she would do in case of a fire and she deflected the conversation saying it was to keep patients from wandering into other rooms.
My dad’s room was filthy, the air conditioning was not cooling and my dad was crawling with ants. Any meds given by mouth had run out of his mouth and collected into his clavicle. I was horrified.
The gatekeepers at Candlelight Cove slowed down my journey to see my dad when they told me (Maggie -I think is her name) I needed a PCR test and I said no worries because I was flying back from Bahamas & had the appropriate test. The gatekeeper said that it had to be PCR and not antigen. This was a bunch of nonsense. There was no such policy.
Families — especially adult children of divorced parents – need to be very careful when dealing with Integracare. Their admission staff sell seniors and their tired spouses & caregivers that admission will be like a luxury cruise. My dad was tricked into a locked memory care unit without consulting his two legal guardian / health care advocates. Instead an admission staff aligned with a stepsister who had no authority over his care and refused to coordinate admission with me.
When I complained, this admission person (Tami—the former SC newscaster who was fired for anti-Semitic comments online) went to my dad and begged him to call off his daughter who was causing issues by asking about the Covid visiting policies, coordination with medical providers and other general questions.
Candlelight Cove aided in alienating my father from me at his time of need. My dad went from zero psychotropics to a laundry list of probably 6-7 + meds which some were contraindicated for sick sinus syndrome. This was psych care provided in the facility.
If families are looking for assisted living, I really think checking your parents into a Residence Inn will offer a higher level of care & coordination. I get the challenges of long -term care. I worked in skilled nursing, ALF’s and outpatient senior care. End of life should not be two steps below veterinary boarding care!