Henrico Health and Rehabilitation Center: One of the Nation's Lowest-Rated Nursing Homes Collected $700,000 in Medicaid Bonuses. What Families Should Know

Henrico Health and Rehabilitation Center is a 120-bed, for-profit nursing home at 561 North Airport Drive in Highland Springs, in Henrico County just east of Richmond. It houses roughly 104 residents on an average day, most of them covered by Medicaid. In 2024 the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) placed it in the Special Focus Facility program, the designation CMS reserves for a small number of nursing homes with a documented history of serious quality problems they have failed to fix.

The Special Focus Facility label is not a routine low score. CMS chooses these facilities from among the worst performers in each state, subjects them to twice-as-frequent inspections, and moves toward ending their Medicare and Medicaid funding if they do not improve. On the federal Care Compare website the facility carries two warning icons: one flagging a history of serious quality issues and one flagging abuse.

Federal and state inspectors have documented a stack of deficiencies. According to reporting by CBS 6 (WTVR) in Richmond, inspections between 2023 and 2024 produced nine violations tied to abuse and neglect and three deficiencies at the "immediate jeopardy" level. That is the most serious category. It means inspectors found a situation that had caused or was likely to cause serious harm or death.

The cited problems included neglected incontinence care that led to skin breakdown, medication errors, failure to act on a worsening pressure ulcer and weight loss, and call bells that went unanswered for long stretches, with one resident reported to have waited more than two hours for help. A family member described the conditions to CBS 6 as "like a madhouse."

The most disturbing citations involve sexual abuse of residents. CBS 6 reported that state inspectors identified at least six sexual abuse incidents at the facility since 2023.

In an August 2023 incident, inspectors found that a nurse aide shaved a resident's genitals without any medical order and engaged in unwanted touching of another resident. Inspectors also found the facility failed to protect two residents from sexual abuse by that aide, and that staff grossly misrepresented what happened when the state asked. A May 2025 inspection cited a receptionist accused of making sexual comments to a resident and showing him explicit photographs, and of propositioning a second resident.

These are findings by government inspectors, documented in the facility's public inspection record, not unproven rumor. The facility's administrator told CBS 6 the center was "actively engaged with CMS" and committed to "continuous improvement" with enhanced training and daily reviews, and CBS 6 reported that a July 2025 revisit found the facility back in compliance on the issues inspected that day.

Regulators have hit Henrico Health and Rehabilitation Center with a series of penalties. Federal civil money penalty records list fines of roughly $104,000 in October 2023, $23,000 in September 2024, and $133,000 in February 2025. CBS 6 reported a further daily penalty of about $1,940 that began at the end of February 2025 and a July 2025 notice of an additional penalty of up to roughly $258,000.

Fines and inspections have not closed the facility. That is the ordinary pattern. CMS uses money penalties, denial of payment for new admissions, and the Special Focus program to push improvement, and it rarely terminates a home outright. Sister facilities under the same ownership have drawn their own penalties, including a denial of Medicare and Medicaid payment for new admissions at one of them, Westport Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, in early 2025.

For families, the practical point is simple. A troubled facility can keep operating and keep admitting residents while its record gets worse. A place still being open is not evidence that its problems are behind it.

CBS 6 also examined where the facility's money was going. Working with forensic accountant Valerie Gray, the station reported that the nursing home's rent payments to a related company under common ownership rose from about $1.6 million in 2022 to about $3.1 million in 2024, a 94 percent increase in two years. By 2024, Gray said, rent made up 20.5 percent of the facility's operating expenses, meaning roughly one of every five dollars spent to run the home left it to pay rent to entities tied to the owners.

Virginia's Medicaid agency set a fair rental value cap of about $917,000 for the facility's 2024 rent, far below what was actually paid. The facility reported an overall loss of about $141,000 for 2024, which Gray said can mask owner profit when earnings are shifted to a related entity. In her words to CBS 6, higher rent meant "fewer dollars going to take care of the people that they have accepted into their care."

The facility disputes this framing. A spokesperson, Mindie Barnett, told CBS 6 that companies such as Lifeworks Rehab and Medical Facilities of America are "vendors not owners," and said the rent increase reflected more than $500,000 in upgrades such as new beds, mattresses, and equipment, along with interest, insurance, taxes, and maintenance. Ownership records list the facility under Henrico Holdings 1 LLC, with managerial control held by a related management company. It is part of a chain formerly operated as Medical Facilities of America, which a New Jersey company, Innovative Healthcare Management, acquired in 2021.

Virginia Delegate Delores McQuinn told CBS 6 the pattern was "egregious" and said she would introduce legislation on financial accountability. These are competing characterizations, and readers should weigh them as such. What is not in dispute is that a large share of the facility's revenue was leaving it for the owners while inspectors were citing it for understaffing.

Regulatory findings and civil claims are different things. An inspection deficiency is a government finding that the facility broke a care rule. A lawsuit is a family's allegation that the facility's conduct caused a specific injury, and it has to be proven. But the two are connected. The inspection record, the penalty history, and the staffing and financial data become evidence when a family pursues a claim, because they can show whether problems were known, recurring, and driven by choices about money and staffing rather than a single bad shift.

Nursing home injuries usually trace back to staffing. When a facility does not have enough people on a shift to reposition residents, answer call bells, and keep incontinent residents clean and dry, the predictable results are pressure ulcers, falls, dehydration, weight loss, and infections that go unrecognized, along with abuse that is not caught or reported. Our article on nursing home abuse and the understaffing problem explains how that evidence works and why chronic understaffing, not just individual wrongdoing, drives many of these injuries.

If your family member is or was a resident at Henrico Health and Rehabilitation Center and suffered a pressure ulcer, a serious fall, unexplained weight loss, an untreated infection, or any form of abuse, the facility's documented history does not by itself prove your case. It does mean the questions are worth asking, and that the records exist to answer them.

Move quickly to preserve the paper and electronic trail. Federal law gives residents and their representatives the right to inspect and copy the medical record, so request the complete chart in writing: nursing notes, the care plan, the Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessments, medication administration records, wound care documentation, weight logs, and any incident, fall, or abuse reports.

Save your own materials too. Dated photographs of bruising, pressure ulcers, weight loss, or poor conditions are hard to dispute later. Write down the dates and times of your visits, what you saw, and the names of staff you spoke with. Keep texts and emails with the facility.

Pull the facility's public record. The federal Care Compare system and independent databases publish inspection results, deficiencies, penalties, and ownership for every Medicare or Medicaid certified nursing home. For a Special Focus Facility, that record is extensive and is discoverable in litigation. You can also file a complaint with Virginia's survey agency, the Office of Licensure and Certification within the Virginia Department of Health, which investigates complaints and can generate citations that become part of the facility's record.