Carlyle's PEU Financial Abuse Puts ManorCare Under

One might expect Healthcare Finance to understand the financial games The Carlyle Group used to put down ManorCare.  These include deal fees, management fees, monetizing real estate and skewing all the rewards to executives and sponsor Carlyle.  It took nearly a decade but ManorCare ceased paying its debt and the company will go to debtholders.  Carlyle's 2007 purchase of ManorCare came with the endorsement of President George W. Bush and Gail Wilensky, former Medicare Chief and ManorCare board member.  Wilensky promised a quality committee would keep Carlyle on the up and up.  That didn't happen.

Two years ago the Department of Justice said it was investigating HCR ManorCare for allegedly exerting pressure on skilled nursing facility administrators and rehabilitation therapists to perform unnecessary services on patients in order to collect additional Medicare and Tricare payment, the DOJ said in 2015. 

Patients were kept in facilities even though they were medically ready to be discharged, the DOJ said.

Skilled nursing facility managers and therapists were threatened with discharge if they did not administer the additional treatments necessary to qualify for the highest Medicare payments, according to the complaint. 

Greed, intimidation are PEU methods.  Healthcare, thanks to Presidents Bush and Obama, is peppered with PEU owned companies.  Who will provide these firms life support after years of toxic sponsor ownership?  Apollo Global Management will own part of ManorCare's carcass, so the company will not be leaving the PEU fold.  That's sad for patients and their families.

Update 6-18-17:  The media continues to soft pedal Carlyle's mismanagement of ManorCare.  The Toledo Blade traditionally has gone deeper into ManorCare as they share a hometown.  The Blade reported "HCR ManorCare has said the leases it signed came at the top of the market."  The leases were intended to enrich ManorCare's sponsor, The Carlyle Group.  Carlyle's sponsorship of ManorCare did the company in. 

Update 11-25-18:  WaPo's piece nails Carlyle's role in sinking ManorCare.