The End of SavaSeniorCare…Again

SavaSeniorCare will cease to exist as a company and transition into “regional operators” by the end of January 2023. CMS data showed as September 2022, Sava downsized to the 11th-largest U.S. nursing home operator. Sava had 92 facilities. Sava blames COVID and not fiscal mismanagement. The operator and its related entities agreed to pay $11.2 million to resolve allegations Sava violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by submitting false claims for rehabilitation services between October 2008 and September 2012 in a system-wide effort to boost Medicare billings, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The Skilled Nursing News, reported that Sava’s chief strategy officer Ray Thivierge raised the alarm on occupancy recovery but those fears were baseless. SavaSeniorCare settled longstanding allegations of billing Medicare for unnecessary therapy services. The company agreed to an $11.2 million agreement after wasting “several million dollars” on defense lawyers.

Sava planned to organize itself around two divisions with properties concentrated in specific geographic regions like The Ensign Group. The operator set out to transfer operations of 48 facilities by the end of 2021. At the time, Sava operated 169 facilities.

Then Sava in September 2021 reorganized 29 more long-term care facilities to four regional operators in Colorado, California and Wyoming.

Other multi-state operating giants like The Ensign Group (Nasdaq: ENSG) and Genesis HealthCare have taken a regional approach. They control with centralized resources and pillars of leadership in every market. The money goes up but the accountability is limited to the facilities.

More recently, real estate investment trust Welltower (NYSE: WELL) struck a joint venture with Integra Health, under which 147 SNFs formerly operated by ProMedica will transition to regional operators.