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Hannah Duston Healthcare in Haverhill and Port Healthcare Center in Newburyport are among six nursing homes changing hands this week from Haverhill-based Whittier Health Network to Lakewood, N.J.-based Atlas Healthcare Group.
New signs went up at Hannah Duston Healthcare, across the street from Haverhill High School on Monument Street, noting it is now known as Haverhill Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center. The transfers were expected as the company said in a December letter, signed by the Arcidi Family, that “It is with mixed emotions that we announce the change in ownership of the six Whittier skilled nursing facilities” and Atlas Healthcare would take over during mid-to-late March.
“We believe Atlas will carry on the mission that our father, Dr. (Alfred L.) Arcidi, started so many years ago: to treat our patients, residents and staff as if they are family.” The letter accompanied filings for each nursing home with the Department of Public Health, Division of Health Care Facility Licensure and Certification.
Besides Hannah Duston and Port Healthcare, the company also sold Masconomet Healthcare Center, Topsfield; Nemasket Healthcare Center, Middleborough; Oak Knoll Healthcare Center, Framingham; and Sippican Healthcare Center, Marion. In Massachusetts, Atlas Healthcare Group already owns Hathorne Hill Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Danvers and Shrewsbury Rehabilitation & Nursing at Southgate in Shrewsbury.
In a posting on its website, Whittier Health Network, founded in 1982 and based at 25 Railroad Square in downtown Haverhill, said it is keeping its rehabilitation hospitals in Westborough and Bradford.
In 2016, then-U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office in Boston reported Whittier Health Network and its director of long-term care, Leo Curtin, agreed to pay $2.5 million to resolve allegations concerning inflated Medicare claims. The office explained the company and Curtin “failed to take sufficient steps to prevent (Massachusetts-based Therapy Resources Management) from engaging in a pattern and practice of fraudulently inflating the reported amounts of therapy provided to Medicare Part A patients in Whittier facilities” in Massachusetts and New York.