A Northville Township nursing home is among nine Michigan facilities named in a civil lawsuit alleging their operator collected more than $111 million in Medicaid reimbursements while leaving residents dangerously understaffed 96% of the time.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed the suit Wednesday, July 29, in Ingham County Circuit Court against Fahim Uddin and his company, Pioneer Health Care Management, which does business as Legacy Healthcare Management. The complaint accuses Uddin of violating the Michigan Medicaid False Claim Act by billing for care his facilities failed to provide.
Northville Manor, located in Wayne County, is one of three Wayne County homes named alongside Heritage Manor Nursing & Rehab Center and Pine Creek Manor Skilled Nursing & Rehab Center. The nine facilities span Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, and Gratiot counties, are licensed for 508 beds, and house an average of 394 residents.
What the complaint alleges
The AG's two-year investigation, launched in October 2024, reviewed staffing data from July 2020 through December 2025. Across that period, the complaint alleges the facilities:
- Failed to meet Michigan's per-shift minimum staffing ratios on at least 496 occasions
- Fell below the state's required 2.25 hours of nursing care per resident per day on at least 1,454 occasions, more than any other chain with four or more facilities in Michigan
- Failed to staff a registered nurse for at least eight consecutive hours a day, seven days a week, as required by federal law, on at least 4,658 occasions
Because of the chronic understaffing, the lawsuit claims residents "sustained injuries without staff present, developed pressure injuries that went unidentified and untreated, were abandoned and were refused readmission, were ignored when calling for help, were left in soiled linens and briefs," according to Bridge Michigan.
The state's review of employee time sheets also found that some employees appeared to have worked more than 24 hours in a day or were logged in two places at once, all while the facilities remained chronically short-staffed.
Money trail
Between 2020 and 2024, Pioneer's nursing homes paid $21.6 million to real estate companies, a management company, and a physical therapy company that Uddin also owned. Nearly $4.8 million of that exceeded what was legally allowed, according to cost reports Pioneer submitted to the federal government.
Employees, meanwhile, sometimes faced bounced paychecks and "significant obstacles" in collecting their wages, the complaint states.
What the AG is seeking
Nessel is pursuing four times the $111.2 million in Medicaid reimbursements the defendants received, plus civil penalties of $5,000 to $10,000 for each violation. The quadrupled reimbursement alone would total roughly $444.8 million before per-violation penalties are added.
"Everyone, each of us, deserves respect, care, and dignity, and that is not what the residents of Pioneer Healthcare were receiving," Nessel said at a Thursday, July 30, press conference in Lansing. "It is outright shameful."
David Tanay, chief of the health care fraud division in the AG's office, led the two-year investigation. Alison Hirschel, director of the Michigan Elder Justice Initiative, said at the same press conference that the complaint "highlights two critical barriers to ensuring quality of care and life for nursing home residents: understaffing and related party transactions."
The operator's response
Paul Tarnavsky, general counsel for Pioneer Health Care Management, said in a statement reported by MLive that the company "categorically disagree[s] with the allegations and intend[s] to defend this matter vigorously through the judicial process." Uddin did not return phone messages seeking comment as of Thursday, July 30.
No court hearing date has been publicly announced. The case was filed in Ingham County Circuit Court.
