In July of 2025, Prestige Home Care, A personal care agency licensed by Maine’s Department of Heath & Human Services, was cited for 62 separate violations.
Personal care agencies, like Prestige Home Care, provide in-home support services to individuals requiring assistance with basic home & personal care needs. Many times these services are covered under a Mainecare Home Care program.
Specifically, agencies like Prestige Home Care operate by hiring individuals to go into people’s homes and assist them with there day-to-day activities. Depending on the needs of the person (client), an employee may be expected to assist with meals, with personal hygiene and bathroom use, dressing/undressing themselves and even driving them around for errands or activities.
The needs of each client are unique and outlined within a client’s service plan. Service plans document what, exactly, the client’s needs are in order to continue living as independently in there homes possible. After submitting a long term care application, a client would receive an assessment from Maximus, a 3rd party company contracted with DHHS to conduct assessments for there Home Services programs. The assessment done my Maximus decides how many hours per week MaineCare will reimburse for personal care services.
If contracted by a client, the role of a Personal Care Agency would be to find appropriate staffing to meet the needs and hours outlined within the service plan.
Totaling 57 pages, the Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction report describing the nature and evidence for the 62 separate violations starts with the finding that Prestige Home Care wasn’t keeping any client admission records. Specifically, they had no records showing the names of there clients, when those clients started services and, if services were discontinued, when they were discontinued.
Maine licensing regulations also require clients signing a service contract with a personal care agency must also sign an Agency Expectations document that would be kept in the client’s file. The DHHS auditor found no evidence that Prestige Home Care was having clients sign such a document, let alone keeping a copy of it on file.
The audit also found several policy requirements designed to protect clients missing from there operations manual.
They had no policies on ethical business relationships with clients and no restrictions on the acceptance of tips, loans or other gifts from clients or there family members. They had no policy on client service plans or anything explaining the requirement to document all services provided to there clients, as well as any emergency procedures carried out. The operation manual also had no policy on client confidentiality, HIPAA rules or mandated reporting requirements.
They lacked an approved policy on how clients may file grievances or how reports of neglect, client property theft or abuse allegations are received and handled. Prestige Home Care also didn’t have any procedures in place for when services were discontinued by either the client or the agency.
The DHHS auditor also found violations with employee qualifications. According to the report, “…the agency failed to have employees enrolled in the Department approved program within 60 calendar days of hire.”. Because Prestige Home Care wasn’t getting there employees enrolled into the approved trainings, they earned a separate violation by having employees working with clients for more than nine months that hadn’t completed the required trainings.
According to the correction plan, the company’s administrator, Tareq Taher, is going to “work closely with those who’s English isn’t advanced enough to aim to find ways to help them get through the course and exam to be certified.”
It was also found that, despite it being a state requirement for employment at a personal care agency, Prestige Home Care was not completing background checks on its employees. According to the report, Taher claimed that the background check document had been misplaced. However, the auditor verified with the Maine Background Check Center (MBCC) that background checks had not been requested and that Taher’s statements were false.
In addition to not completing required background checks on employees, Prestige Home Care also ignored there legal responsibility of ensuring employees did not have “substantiated incidents of abuse, neglect or misappropriation of property by either Maine’s adult protective services or child protective services.”
State regulations require that the agency’s new employee orientation include a grievance policy, job duties and responsibilities. Orientations also must include training on client service plans, documentation requirements, contingency planning practices, infection control as well as state and federal client confidentiality requirements. The orientation provided by Prestige Home Care included none of those things because Prestige Home Care wasn’t providing any orientation to new employees at all.
Required annual staff trainings to update and remind employees of mandated reporting rules, confidentiality requirements, polices on abuse, theft and neglect, infection control, there grievance policy and agency expectations were also not occurring.
Prestige Home Care also failed to keep employee records containing dates of hire, signed job descriptions, first date the employee provided direct care to a client or any required program enrollments. Separate violations also occurred because employee records were missing required documents. For example, documents showing MBCC, APS and CPS checks, completed orientation programs and trainings, annual performance reviews, required supervisory visits were also not included in employee files because Prestige Home Care wasn’t doing any of those things.
Located at 75 Bishop St. in Portland, Prestige Home Care shares an address tied to at least seven other personal care agencies currently licensed with Maine DHHS. At least 2 of those were also found to have multiple violations following recent audits.
Greater Portland Home Care and Anywhere Care Services received 27 and 46 violations respectively. Violations described by the auditor were similar to those found at Prestige Home Care. Problems with keeping client records, not completing employee background checks, not training employees on service plans or on documentation requirements are just a handful of the similarities.
The reports themselves do not accuse these agencies of committing medicaid fraud in addition to the slew of violations. However, if agencies like Prestige Home Care are not keeping client records, are not training there employees on how to provide personal care assistance, are not explaining what a service plan is or why they must document everything they do for the client during every hour worked, then what, exactly, are they billing MaineCare for? How much money have companies like Prestige Home Care, Greater Portland Home Care or Anywhere Care Services collected from MaineCare reimbursements without actually having any documentation that they provided any service to anyone?
–TMP