East Massapequa nursing home property, facility sold for nearly $50 million

The owner of an East Massapequa nursing home sold the building and land for $49 million at the end of last year, amid a bankruptcy surrounding another of his nursing facilities.

Nursing home magnate Bent Philipson signed a deed to sell Parkview Care and Rehabilitation Center’s property, at 5353 Merrick Rd. in December, according to property records.

The buyer of the 169-bed facility shares an address with Excelsior Care Group — a Brooklyn-based nursing home investor that recently picked up another property in Queens for $75 million, property records show.

The sale comes as Philipson and other investors face bankruptcy on the troubled Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in Woodbury. That bankruptcy followed a 2022 lawsuit by State Attorney General Letitia James that led a judge to fine the owners and operators $2 million and a finding that they failed to properly care for residents, though both sides have appealed.

The Parkview sale also follows a broader trend in the industry of owners selling parts of nursing home businesses — such as the real estate or operations — through separate companies, obscuring ownership, said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Manhattan-based Long Term Care Community Coalition.

"The nursing home industry has gotten very sophisticated and complex," Mollot said. "Transparency is pretty poor."

Philipson and an attorney for Park View Care and Rehabilitation Center did not respond to requests for comment.

New owner, new debt 

The land and building have been sold to Park View SNF Realty Group LLC, which then took out a new, $23.9 million loan on the property, records dated Dec. 18 show.

It’s unclear how the new owners plan to use the loan, which is in addition to $14.4 million in existing debt. Excelsior Care Group’s Abraham Berkowitz, who was listed on mortgage documents, did not respond to requests for comment. Excelsior Care Group is affiliated with 33 facilities in New York, New Jersey and Florida, including Nassau Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Hempstead, according to ProPublica.

However, the sale may not change the facility’s day-to-day operations, as the owners have not applied to change the home's operator, according to the New York State Department of Health.

Selling the property separately from the business operations is common in the industry, because it allows investors in the nursing home to protect the overall business in the case of a lawsuit, Mollot said. The Parkview home has faced a handful of lawsuits from residents' family members, alleging negligent care, according to court records.

It also makes it difficult to identify investors in the nursing home, Mollot added.

Previous investors in Parkview included Benjamin Landa, a nursing home owner and the nominee-in-waiting to become the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, according to the New York State Department of Health. When reached by phone on March 11, Landa said he was "unequivocally not involved" in the Parkview facility any more.

For-profit model grows

Parkview is one of hundreds of for-profit nursing homes across the state, and their numbers are growing.

"It used to be that most nursing homes were either not-for-profit or government-owned, and now [they’re often] for-profit," said Bill Hammond, a senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany-based watchdog group. "While some for-profit homes deliver high quality care, on average, that category has lower ratings and lower staffing."

In New York, 40.5% of nursing homes were nonprofit companies in 2010, according to an attorney general's report. A decade later, 30.6% of nursing homes were nonprofits, according to the Empire Center.

The Empire Center found for-profit nursing homes spend less on wages and benefits for employees than not-for-profit and government-owned facilities, and also receive lower federal ratings than for-profits, according to a 2022 analysis.