unregalcare

This week The Boston Globe broke the news that Massachusetts regulators are seeking to revoke all of the nursing home licenses held by RegalCare. A recent Spotlight investigation examines how nursing home operator Eli Mirlis and his company, RegalCare, expanded across Massachusetts while the quality of care at many of their facilities deteriorated — and why state regulators continued approving his acquisitions.

Nursing home quality declined sharply. After RegalCare took over a nursing home in Taunton, its federal quality rating fell from five stars to one within three years. Other facilities in Quincy, Holyoke, and Medford also experienced serious declines or documented care failures.

Staffing and resident care suffered. At the Taunton facility, nursing staff hours were cut nearly in half. The Globe reported that residents sometimes waited for unanswered call buttons, remained in soiled diapers for hours, and experienced medication-related lapses. In one case, a transplant patient reportedly missed 40 doses of medication intended to prevent organ rejection.

Money flowed from care facilities into related businesses. The investigation found that Mirlis reduced spending on nursing services while charging facilities substantial rent through real estate companies he also owned. At Taunton in 2025, spending on nursing services was about $530,000 lower than under the previous owners, while annual rent charged by his real estate company reached $522,000 — more than four times the previous amount.

A family alleges a fatal medication error. In Holyoke, a resident, Theresa Walsh Sr., was reportedly given two antidepressants simultaneously for two weeks, although she normally took only one. Her death certificate lists serotonin syndrome as the cause of death. Her daughters allege in an ongoing lawsuit that the medication error contributed to her death; those allegations have not been established as a final court finding.

Regulators continued approving purchases despite warning signs. Mirlis disclosed that most of his existing Massachusetts nursing homes ranked among the state’s lowest-performing facilities when he applied to acquire two more in Medford. Regulators approved the purchases anyway. The Globe also found that the state Department of Public Health had not denied a nursing home acquisition application or revoked a nursing home license in at least seven years.

Medicare and Medicaid billing: A whistleblower alleged that RegalCare and a related therapy company pushed unnecessary, intensive physical therapy on frail residents to increase government reimbursements. In 2026, Mirlis agreed to pay a $1 million penalty and acknowledged his personal role in the billing scheme. The related therapy company separately agreed to pay $315,000 to settle the allegations.

Professional credentials: New Jersey permanently revoked Mirlis’s nursing home administrator license in 2018 after regulators found he had misrepresented his completion of mandatory continuing education. The Globe also found that he repeatedly stated on Massachusetts applications that no professional license had been revoked. Online biographies listed educational credentials that the universities involved said they could not verify.

Reading the RegalCare at Glen Ridge Facebook page, one would never know that they were in a time of crisis. Their excessive use of words such as ‘honor’ and ‘celebrate’ along with inauthentic and didactic stock photography is a façade which masks the elder abuse taking place in their facility.