After having its “trusted advisory service” tagline called into question last month by the Washington Post, senior living referral service A Place for Mom now is the target of US Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who is questioning the company’s “potentially deceptive business practices.”
Casey, chairman of the US Senate Special Committee on Aging, in a letter dated Monday and shared Tuesday, asked the referral site to disclose more information about its business efforts, including its advertising practices. Stating that he is seeking clarity on how the company operates, Casey accused the company of “misleading older adults and their families by claiming that it is an unbiased and no-cost recommendation and referral service for people in search of assisted living facilities.”
Referencing company marketing materials and information used in The Washington Post analysis, Casey said that the company’s recommendations are “not objective, not safe and not truly free.”
He suggested that the company only refers people to senior living communities that pay a commission, pointing to some A Place for Mom top-rated communities that “actually have records of substandard or dangerous care.” The senator wrote that A Place for Mom has a “record of placing referred residents in jeopardy” and “attempts to avoid responsibility” and liability by not vouching for the accuracy or completeness of information on communities listed on its site. By not disclosing the financial relationship the company has with companies listed on its site, Casey said, the company’s advertising is biased, false and misleading.
He also accused the company of encouraging families to “spend above their initial budgets,” pointing to its own data showing that 38% of families whose use of the service resulted in a move to assisted living paid monthly rent that was higher than the upper limit of their budget range, a figure that increased to 55% for memory care referrals.
“It is clear A Place for Mom is upselling families, and the company ultimately benefits from families spending beyond their means,” Casey wrote.
A Place for Mom previously told McKnight’s Senior Living that it is continually improving its processes based on feedback from residents and families, and that it is dedicated to “providing access to transparent information, tools and resources” to help families make informed decisions.
Casey asked the company to provide information and documents by July 15 on three years of revenue, contract and partnership sample agreements with participating operators, fee data, training data for the company’s senior living advisers, and the company’s process for reviewing licensing, inspection, audit, complaint and other safety data on communities before they are listed on the website.
He further questioned the company’s ownership by private equity firms, an arrangement that Casey said “underscores its own profit seeking motives.”
Founded in 2000, A Place for Mom was owned by Warburg Pincus from 2010 to 2017. The company was sold in 2017 to technology investment firm Silver Lake and global growth equity firm General Atlantic. Two years later, the company made news when it agreed to a $6 million settlement in a class action lawsuit claiming the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. At the time, the company said it did not agree with the allegations.
The question about private equity comes after two of Casey’s colleagues in the Senate, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, both of Massachusetts, recently introduced a bill they say is meant to “root out corporate greed and private equity abuse” in assisted living communities, nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices and other “healthcare entities.” Warren also sits on the Senate Aging Committee.
Increased scrutiny
Casey’s letter to A Place for Mom follows letters he sent to senior living companies Brookdale Senior Living, Atria Senior Living and Sunrise Senior Living in January asking them to address “significant concerns” about costs, staffing levels and resident safety.
Assisted living providers also came under scrutiny in November coverage by the New York Times and KFF Health News and in articles by the Washington Post in December and afterward. The lay media outlets reported on the deaths of residents with dementia who eloped from communities, the industry pricing structure, rate increases and the for-profit status of most providers. In a separate article in May, the Post published an analysis calling into question A Place for Mom’s description of itself as a “trusted advisory service,” accusing the senior living referral site of recommending communities that have been cited for neglect or providing substandard care and of using reviews that have been manipulated by providers.
At a Senate Aging Committee hearing in January, some senators pondered increased federal involvement and called for the US Government Accountability Office to study how much federal money is spent on assisted living communities, the cost of assisted living services, and the transparency and availability of that information to consumers.
