---
title: "Massachusetts Moves to Pull RegalCare’s 12 Nursing Home Licenses"
description: "First license revocation in at least seven years follows a Spotlight probe of rent, fraud and vanishing nursing hours"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-14T00:10:54.388Z
modified: 2026-10-14T04:23:54Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/massachusetts-moves-to-pull-regalcare-s-12-nursing-home-lice-266570
language: en
tags: ["health", "regulation", "nursing-homes", "fraud", "elderly", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Massachusetts Moves to Pull RegalCare’s 12 Nursing Home Licenses

*First license revocation in at least seven years follows a Spotlight probe of rent, fraud and vanishing nursing hours*

By Luis Goa · October 14, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/massachusetts-moves-to-pull-regalcare-s-12-nursing-home-lice-266570

## In brief

- Massachusetts DPH moved to revoke all 12 RegalCare nursing home licenses on Tuesday
- It is the state’s first license revocation in at least seven years; RegalCare plans to appeal
- Owner Eli Mirlis cut Taunton nursing spending by $530,000 while quadrupling rent to his own company, to $522,000
- Mirlis separately paid $1 million last month to settle fraud claims over unnecessary therapy billing, 2018–2023
- Long-delayed 2024 oversight regulations went before the Public Health Council for a vote the same week

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has not denied a single nursing home acquisition or revoked a single operating license in at least seven years, according to a Boston Globe Spotlight review of state records. On Tuesday it moved to revoke all 12 licenses held by RegalCare, the New Jersey-based chain run by Eli Mirlis, as [the Globe reported](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/13/metro/regalcare-nursing-homes-license-revoke/). The action does not close any home. It starts an administrative hearing in which the state has to prove Mirlis is unfit to run a nursing home in Massachusetts — and, if DPH wins, bars him from the business here for ten years.

RegalCare says it will fight. A company statement called the revocations something it will contest “through the appeals process in the coming weeks and months,” while promising “no disruption in care to our patients or their families.” DPH commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein framed the action differently: “Families trust nursing homes to care for their loved ones, and every resident deserves safe, compassionate, high-quality care that respects their dignity.”

## What changed Mirlis’s homes

The trigger was a Spotlight investigation that traced how Mirlis extracted money from the homes he bought. At the Taunton facility, RegalCare cut spending on nursing services by $530,000 in 2025 compared with the prior owner, while the rent the home paid to Mirlis’s own real estate company rose to $522,000 — up from roughly $119,000, a more than fourfold increase, according to [the Globe’s Spotlight report](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/spotlight/massachusetts-nursing-homes-outside-owners/regalcare-eliyahu-mirlis/). Registered-nurse hours at Taunton fell by more than half; licensed-practical-nurse hours fell by more than a third. By 2025 the home was paying $1.6 million a year to Mirlis-affiliated companies — about 16% of its operating budget, nearly seven times what it spent on food.

**Where a RegalCare home's money went** Payer, operator and Mirlis-affiliated recipients, per the Globe's Spotlight reporting

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Medicare / MassHealth | RegalCare nursing home *(nursing hours cut >50%)* | reimbursement |
| RegalCare nursing home *(nursing hours cut >50%)* | Mirlis real estate affiliate *(rent $522,000, up from $119,000)* | rent |
| RegalCare nursing home *(nursing hours cut >50%)* | Billing/therapy contractor *(Stern Therapy Consultants)* | therapy claims |
| Billing/therapy contractor *(Stern Therapy Consultants)* | Medicare / MassHealth | inflated billing |
| Mirlis real estate affiliate *(rent $522,000, up from $119,000)* | Eli Mirlis | ownership |

![Where a RegalCare home's money went. Payer, operator and Mirlis-affiliated recipients, per the Globe's Spotlight reporting](https://rews.cc/img/cf57c1294d22dd96b96e82c9b34409c0e0dcf72d.webp)

Based on [Boston Globe Spotlight Team](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/spotlight/massachusetts-nursing-homes-outside-owners/regalcare-eliyahu-mirlis/)

Federal quality ratings tracked the cuts. Care Compare’s star system, which runs one to five, scored Taunton and Quincy at five stars before Mirlis bought them; both fell to one. Holyoke went from three stars to one — and a woman died there a few weeks after receiving two antidepressants at once, when she had previously been prescribed only one, according to her daughter, Theresa Walsh Jr. Greenfield held a four-star rating until this month’s federal update dropped it to two. RegalCare’s two Medford homes, bought in 2024, racked up more than $400,000 in federal fines within a year, covering lapses in care for more than two dozen patients.

## A regulator that could have said no

Mirlis’s record predates his Massachusetts purchases. In 2018, New Jersey regulators found he had lied about completing continuing-education requirements and permanently revoked his nursing-home administrator license there. On at least seven Massachusetts applications filed since 2020, Mirlis checked a box stating he had never had a professional license revoked, according to the Globe. Massachusetts regulators did not know about the New Jersey revocation until the Globe reported it; Goldstein cited the misrepresentation as one basis for Tuesday’s action.

Goldstein has also pointed to limits on DPH’s authority, telling the Globe that denying licenses based on an operator’s out-of-state record could expose the state to litigation. The Globe’s review of existing law found no such prohibition — DPH was never barred from weighing an out-of-state record, even before any new statute. That gap is the backdrop for a 2024 law, Chapter 197 of the Acts of 2024, signed by Governor Maura Healey, which requires DPH to weigh an applicant’s in-state and out-of-state quality history, litigation, finances, management-company ties and private-equity involvement before approving a purchase. The law took effect in December 2024 but needed implementing regulations before DPH could use it. Those regulations went before the state’s [Public Health Council](https://www.mass.gov/event/public-health-council-meeting-october-14-2026-10-14-2026) for a vote on Wednesday, more than 22 months after the law passed.

![A cream shield with golden cobwebs forms the head of a large key extending over a small golden hospital bed on wheels against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/d739947045af91e79e2231f7a9ac1fc1788959fd.webp)

Representative Thomas Stanley, a Waltham Democrat, was among lawmakers who pressed Goldstein after the Spotlight report ran. “We made it clear that action had to be taken and I said sometimes, that if no action is taken, then the state is complicit,” Stanley said. “And what the hell are we here for? The state needed to act, we have to protect the defenseless.” Representative Marjorie Decker, who chairs the Joint Committee on Public Health, separately sent Goldstein a letter asking why DPH had not used the tools it already had.

## The fraud case underneath

Separate from the licensing fight, Mirlis, RegalCare and executive Hector Caraballo settled federal and state fraud allegations last month for $1 million. The underlying complaint, filed under the False Claims Act after a whistleblower suit, alleged that between 2018 and 2023 RegalCare billed Medicare and Medicaid for intensive rehabilitation therapy that patients’ medical records did not support, across facilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut, [according to Skilled Nursing News](https://skillednursingnews.com/2026/09/nursing-home-and-executives-agree-to-pay-1m-for-overbilling-allegations/). Caraballo allegedly modified clinical records to justify the highest-paying therapy billing code without assessing patients or consulting clinicians; Mirlis allegedly directed the billing company to submit claims before patient assessments were finalized. The whistleblower, identified in court filings as McCormick, will receive $165,000 of the settlement. RegalCare’s therapy consultant, Stern Therapy Consultants, separately settled related claims for $315,000 in March. Goldstein cited the settlement, along with a DPH review of RegalCare’s facilities in Massachusetts and other states, as additional grounds for Tuesday’s revocation.

![A clipboard displays a walking frame symbol, with gold coins spilling from a slot near the bottom against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/5bc8f3f089056cee0848959b08e0aadb89a5f374.webp)

Under the enhanced monitoring DPH ordered alongside the revocations, every RegalCare home gets at least one unannounced visit a week starting Wednesday; the worst performers — the two Medford homes, RegalCare at Wakefield and RegalCare at Taunton — get at least two. None of this closes a home or moves a resident. It is surveillance pending a hearing Mirlis is expected to contest.

## What the revocation does and doesn’t do

RegalCare’s scale makes the case bigger than one operator. Mirlis’s chain holds at least 29 nursing homes across five states; the 12 in Massachusetts are a fraction of his business. He is one of nine out-of-state chains the Spotlight investigation flagged, which collectively went from owning 12 Massachusetts facilities in 2019 to controlling 61 by this year — nearly one in five of the state’s roughly 340 nursing homes. From 2023 through 2025, 69 Massachusetts nursing homes changed hands, more than double the rate of the three years before, as the pandemic scrambled ownership across the sector. Massachusetts Medicaid pays roughly $2 billion a year for long-term care; how much of that reaches nursing staff rather than affiliated landlords and billing contractors is not something DPH’s licensing process was built to check until this week.

Paul Lanzikos, cofounder of the elder advocacy group Dignity Alliance, said DPH told him Tuesday it is examining other chains beyond RegalCare. “I asked them, are they paying attention to any other questionable characters who have blown into town?” he said. “Without saying yes, they indicated as much.” Which chains, and whether the state denies an application before this decade is out, is the number to watch next.

## See also

- [Chapter 197 of the Acts of 2024 background](https://mlri.org/2024/09/12/massachusetts-long-term-care-bill-signed-into-law/) — mlri.org · Summary of the long-term care reform law DPH is now implementing
- [CMS Nursing Home Care Compare, Taunton facility](https://projects.propublica.org/nursing-homes/homes/h-225467) — projects.propublica.org · ProPublica's searchable federal inspection and staffing data
- [Mass. lawmakers press Healey administration on oversight](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/01/metro/lawmakers-healey-lax-nursing-home-regulation/) — bostonglobe.com · Globe follow-up on legislative pressure after the Spotlight report
- [States look beyond their borders on nursing home ownership](https://www.mcknights.com/news/states-look-beyond-their-borders-to-keep-problematic-nursing-home-operators-out) — mcknights.com · How other states are screening out-of-state operators