BALTIMORE, MD — The sixty nursing home caregivers from across the nation who assembled in Baltimore this week have one thing in common: they’re sick of nursing homes letting workers and seniors down, and they’re ready to take the case for better staffing, training, and better care to the public. The group, SEIU Healthcare’s “Nursing Home Accountability Team,” chanted and handed out flyers during a Rubenstein speech at the SABEW Conference in Baltimore.

Rubenstein’s firm, the Carlyle Group, bought out ManorCare nursing homes last December. Carlyle had issued a “Patients First Pledge” that included providing training for caregivers, maintaining adequate staffing levels, and ensuring quality care.

Residents and caregivers point to recent care problems and problems at the bargaining table as evidence that Carlyle is not truly committed to its promises. One home in Davenport, IA was cited for more than 30 violations of regulatory standards in a recent inspection. Meanwhile, when caregivers in ManorCare’s Towson, MD facility fought for a fully-funded training program, the company fought back, offering a plan that would require caregivers, already struggling to make ends meet at their low hourly wages, to pay back some of the cost.

SEIU members at the Towson, MD facility have been working without a contract for months, struggling to negotiate for better wages, a training fund, affordable family health care, and a better pension plan. Their fight underlines Carlyle-ManorCare’s reluctance to invest real money in improving front-line conditions, so that Manor Care homes can attract and retain the stable, high-quality staff needed to provide the highest quality care.

Today’s action was part of a three-day focus on ManorCare’s broken promises. After two days of on-the-street actions to draw attention to Carlyle-ManorCare’s broken promises, the caregivers will take their case to Capitol Hill as they meet with their Senators and lobby for the passage of the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act (S2641). The bill would update nursing home regulations to take account of the increasing number of large buyouts. It requires more disclosure of who owns each nursing home, who is ultimately responsible for the care at the home, and how taxpayer funding is being spent.

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As hundreds of private equity investors gathered at the Wharton School for a conference on "harnessing the winds of change to allocate capital and maintain returns of recent years,” protesters called on the industry to take greater responsibility for the impact of their investments on workers and communities. Workers from Manor Care nursing homes, a company recently acquired by conference keynote speaker David Rubenstein’s The Carlyle Group, joined protesters in holding up the firm’s poor record in the community as an example of the harmful impact of irresponsible buyouts.

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Now that the Carlyle Group owns Manor Care, it owns its problems, too. After months of contentious debate over the quality of care at Manor Care homes and whether the Carlyle Group is fit to take care of fragile seniors, it is now time for Carlyle to step up and provide the quality care it promised. To bring Manor Care’s homes up to standards and expert recommendations, this means increasing staffing and addressing deficiencies from day one.

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With a year-end deadline looming to close a $6.6 billion takeover deal, the Carlyle Group and HCR Manor Care, the nation's largest nursing home chain, are attempting to steamroll the regulatory process in states to avoid addressing concerns about resident care. Despite a push to get states to rubber stamp approval of the buyout, state officials in Florida, Maryland, Oklahoma,Kansas, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, and West Virginia have yet to issue licenses for the Carlyle takeover of nursing homes, according to the latest information available to SEIU. Those eight states have approximately 120 Manor Care nursing homes, nearly half of all Manor Care's skilled nursing facilities.

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As The Carlyle Group, a private equity buyout firm, faces more scrutiny in its drive to take over Manor Care nursing homes, this week regulators or lawmakers in three states will look more closely at the issue of whether private equity ownership hurts residents. This brings the total number of states who have held or scheduled meetings or hearings up to six.

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