COLUMBUS, Ohio – In the month after closing out his duty as a chief architect of the state’s $86 billion budget, Ohio House Finance Committee Chairman Jay Edwards launched a fundraising bonanza powered by nearly half a million dollars from owners and executives of Ohio’s nursing homes.
So far this year, Edwards, an Athens County Republican, has raised about $1.2 million. Nearly $1 million – an eye-popping number for a state lawmaker with no defined next race on the horizon – came during July alone. And nursing home executives paid at least $465,000 of that July sum, according to a Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer review of campaign finance filings and nursing home ownership data.
This came in the three weeks after the Ohio House trumped over the Senate in steering hundreds of millions more Medicaid dollars to state nursing homes in the budget.
Edwards has raised more this year than GOP Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens (who raised $733,000) or GOP Senate President Matt Huffman (about $340,000). He also raised more than his counterpart, Senate Finance Chairman Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican who raised $882,000 in his race to win a competitive U.S. Senate primary (excluding self-funding and carrying over funds from a previous Senate run).
While those three received some support from the long-term care industry, Edwards was in a league of his own in terms of volume and scope of industry contributions.
He raised more money for his campaign in July 2023 than in any prior entire year since he first ran in 2016. Edwards is in his final two-year stint in the House, as term limits block him from seeking reelection. He has previously said he will “probably” run for the Ohio Senate but may look for other opportunities as well.
As state lawmakers wrangled over Ohio’s two-year budget, the amount of money nursing homes would receive via their base rate in Medicaid, the primary payer for long-term care, was a sticking point. The House, where Edwards shepherded the budget, wanted $715 million per year. The Senate countered with $301 million.
They settled on an average of $688 million, more than double what the Senate proposed and just shy of the House provision. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the budget into law in early July, along with several measures aimed at improving care outcomes for nursing home residents.
Then, between July 18 and July 27, about 30 different industry executives wrote Edwards checks, most for the legal maximum of about $15,500.
For instance, Foundations Health Solutions owns dozens of nursing homes all around Ohio. Its Vice President of Culture, Robert Speelman, gave Edwards $15,500 on July 18. One day later, Chief Governance Officer Joe Altieri did the same. Vice President of Corporate Affairs Dan Parker gave $15,500 on July 20. Gretchen Colleran, wife of company founder Brian Colleran, gave $31,000, split into two checks, that same day. Both Parker and Brian Colleran recently emerged from a corporate integrity agreement with the federal government, after paying $19.5 million to settle allegations of Medicare fraud in 2017.
Other family-owned nursing homes proved similarly generous. David, Deborah, John, and Richard O’Neill, of North Ridgeville, each wrote Edwards a $15,500 check on July 19. O’Neill Healthcare operates six nursing homes in Ohio.
Edwards, when read several names of facility executives who wrote him the $15,500 checks, said he didn’t know them.
He has previously received significant support from the nursing home industry. And in an interview, he said that any executives who choose to support him to do so because of his emphasis on quality of care. He said new rules under the budget tie more Medicaid money to quality metrics, an incentive system designed to produce better care outcomes. And reimbursements now only focus on direct care costs, unlike under prior law that considers things he said could be gamed like facilities’ capital costs.
“We wanted to get to the point where Ohio is leading in the country in the percentage of money we put toward quality of care,” he said.
Some homes affiliated with Edwards’ contributors have histories of allegations of providing poor and dangerous care to residents.
Embassy Healthcare owns about 40 nursing homes or similar facilities in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
The Embassy of Newark regularly finds itself faulted by CMS. In June 2020, the facility mingled elderly residents who were exposed to a COVID-19 with presumably healthy residents, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS determined the facility’s failure to immediately quarantine and test those residents “likely contributed” to an outbreak that spread throughout the facility infecting 71 residents with COVID-19 resulting in 20 deaths. In May 2022, the same facility failed to continue a resident’s post-hospitalization UTI treatment, resulting in a prolonged UTI plus “delusions, paranoia, tearfulness, and urinary incontinence.” In March of this year, a patient with dementia and a complex medical history wandered off from the facility despite a known risk of elopement. She was found on the ground of a drug store parking lot bleeding from the wrists with a swollen face.
CMS also determined Embassy of Cambridge earlier this year put a patient in “immediate jeopardy,” the most serious demerit, for repeatedly rejecting a request to hospitalize a resident from his family as his complicated medical condition deteriorated, until he eventually required “aggressive critical care treatment” and ICU care.
Aaron Handler, Embassy’s CEO, gave Edwards $15,000. So too did company CFO Beckie Golamb, and in-house counsel Nicholas Ciccone. Company founder George Repchick and his wife donated a total of $31,000 to Edwards as well. The company’s corporate office didn’t respond to an inquiry about the CMS claims or the political contributions.
On June 22, 2022, a diabetic and osteoarthritic resident in a wheelchair at Amherst Meadows Skilled Nursing and Rehab, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-rated one-star facility in Massillon, was left outside in a courtyard in 94-degree heat for about 90 minutes, according to a regulatory investigation of the incident. A nurse found her “sitting outside in the heat, slumped over, eyes fixed, drooling and not responding to verbal or touch stimuli.” She told investigators she asked to go outside, where she was left alone without water or sunblock. She yelled for help as she overheated and tried to wheel herself inside but couldn’t. She was treated with an IV and for pain coming from blisters on her feet, thigh, and shoulder.
Kevin Daubenmire, who owns a 9% stake in Amherst Meadows, wrote Edwards a $15,000 check in July. Facility administrator Ashley Dodge said in an email the home has since improved its procedures and facility to better protect residents, and hasn’t faced regulatory trouble since. She said a political donation from a minority owner of the facility is “absolutely unrelated to anything stemming from this isolated occurrence.”
Another chain’s CEO, William Weisberg of Saber Healthcare, gave Edwards $15,500, as did Brian and Geoni Weisberg. Saber executive Benjamin Volpe gave $15,500, as did Kylie Volpe. Company vice presidents Karen Stanfield and Michael Demagall each gave $15,500 as well.
Saber’s corporate office didn’t respond to an inquiry.
Roger King, a lobbyist with the Academy of Senior Health Sciences, a trade association, forcefully defended Edwards in an interview. He said the budget established other bona fide quality improvements like newly allowing Medicaid to pay for private rooms for residents. It also establishes different policies designed to allow state officials to fine poor performing homes or reveal if private equity interests take a stake in facilities.
He said the contributors appreciate seeing a young, intelligent politician with a genuine interest in elder care issues who wants to improve the lives of older Ohioans. The donations, he said, are an “organic” showing of that support.
“It’s not some conspiracy,” he said. “It’s people emotionally reacting to a budget.”
While he acknowledged some care lapses, he said any chain of dozens of nursing homes will inevitably fail from time to time, and that’s not necessarily a reflection of its owner. And he said some operators, naming Embassy specifically, deliberately buy up troubled homes in an effort to turn them around, which can damage their reputation in the short run.
“These are not easy facilities to run,” he said. “You’re relying on human beings to not f— up.”
The Ohio Health Care Association, another major industry lobby group, didn’t hold any fundraising event or take up a collection for Edwards, according to its executive director and lobbyist Pete Van Runkle. He said he didn’t know what’s behind the donor surge.
Edwards said he didn’t know why homes with quality of care problems would be supporting him. But he insisted their money won’t impede his ongoing quest to improve care outcomes.
“The better question is, why would they support someone that’s so much against their interests?” he said.
Jake Zuckerman covers state policy and politics for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
