ANDERSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — An Anderson Township nursing home is under scrutiny after a patient’s death was changed from natural causes to homicide by the Hamilton County Coroner.
Robert Meyer was a patient at Forest Hills Healthcare Center, on Moran Road near the Clermont County line. He died on Sept. 6, 2025, soon after being transferred to a hospice facility in Blue Ash.
No autopsy was conducted because the original death certificate said Meyer died of natural causes. However, as his funeral approached, his daughter raised concerns about his care at Forest Hills.
Tammy Maham sent the coroner pictures of neck bruises that Meyer incurred in the days before his death.
That led to Meyer’s disinterment, a Sept. 22 autopsy and a revised death certificate that lists “physical elder abuse” as the immediate cause of death by homicide.
Watch: We look into Robert Meyer's death at Forest Hills Healthcare Center
The certificate also documented “neck and rib cage injuries” that happened at the nursing home.
The coroner declined to answer questions or release the full autopsy, citing a pending investigation by the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office.
“He was a really strong man,” Maham told the WCPO 9 I-Team when she asked us to investigate the nursing home. “The day he entered there, he never got out of bed again.”
Forest Hills Executive Director Dayna Bennett Frankart declined to comment, referring the I-Team to media relations at CommuniCare, a Cincinnati-based company that operates Forest Hills and over 80 other health care facilities in seven states.
“Our top priority is always to ensure the safety and well-being of our residents and staff,” said a company statement. “We are cooperating fully with authorities and are unable to comment further because of the investigation.”
‘Treating me like a dog’
Forest Hills Healthcare Center is a 138-bed nursing home with above-average quality ratings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That includes a five-star rating for quality measures like flu shots and prevention of falls, and four out of five stars for staffing levels.
But it also had 83 complaints in the last three years that resulted in a citation. And it paid a $16,801 federal fine in 2024 for reasons that were not explained on the CMS ratings site.
Forest Hills faced two wrongful death lawsuits in Hamilton County since 2023. The first was dismissed without prejudice a few months after the complaint was filed.
A 2025 lawsuit alleged Forest Hills “utterly neglected the care needs of 64-year-old Tommy Jent,” who died from complications of pressure ulcers after “Forest Hills staff left Tommy lying in one position in bed for hours and hours on end.”
In court filings, Forest Hills denied allegations of inadequate care and argued Jent expressly assumed the risk of “injuries, damages and death” when he was admitted.
The case is scheduled for trial in July.
Maham, who lives in New Richmond, said she was concerned about her father’s care for several weeks last summer, after he pleaded for help in voicemail messages to her.
“Get ahold of me real quick,” Meyer said in a July 29 voicemail shared by Maham. “Treating me like a dog. I ain’t no dog and I ain’t sick. Everything they do is something to make money. Please, honey, help me, please.”
‘I think somebody choked him’
Maham claims the staff at Forest Hills spent a lot of time on their phones and tablets, sometimes left his bed without sheets and failed to address the pain he endured from severe arthritis.
“They weren’t feeding him in that place,” Maham said. “They ignored him completely, 100%.”
In the five weeks leading up to his death, Hamilton County records show Meyer made four 911 calls, complaining about changes to his medication and pain in his arms, hips and legs.
He did not allege that he was being abused and had trouble remembering his room number and the name of his nursing home, audio files show.
“I’m just hurting all over,” Meyer told a 911 operator on Aug. 27. “I really hurt bad.”
That call led to a stay at Mercy Hospital Anderson, where Maham noticed Meyer was having trouble moving his arm.
“I said, ‘Dad, what happened to your arm? What happened?’ And he said, ‘Oh, they jerked me over when they were changing my diaper,’” Maham said.
By September 2, Meyer was back at Forest Hills and Maham was documenting his care.
She took pictures of bruises on her father’s neck, time-stamped on Sept. 2 and Sept. 4. The bruises were light pink and purple at first, darkening over time.
Maham is convinced the photos show finger marks on Meyer’s neck, but she couldn’t convince the medical staff at Forest Hills Care Center.
“They were all arguing with me, claiming that this didn’t happen,” Maham said. “And we’re looking right at it.”
On Sept. 5, Meyer moved to Hospice of Cincinnati in Blue Ash, where Maham claims a doctor noticed the bruising but did nothing about it.
“He’s by the door, and he turns around and says, ‘What happened to his neck?’” Maham recalled. “I said, ‘You tell me what happened to his neck because I think somebody choked him.’”
On Sept. 11, Hospice of Cincinnati’s medical director, Dr. Manish Srivastava, signed a death certificate saying Meyer died of “protein calorie malnutrition,” a natural cause.
The document, provided to the I-Team by Maham’s attorney, made no mention of bruising on Meyer’s neck.
Hospice of Cincinnati declined to comment for this story but provided a statement:
“Hospice of Cincinnati is required by both law and our deep commitment to patient safety to report instances of known or suspected elder abuse to the appropriate authorities. Due to patient privacy laws, Hospice of Cincinnati is unable to comment further on this matter.”
Maham continued to raise concerns as the family prepared for a graveside service at Greenlawn Cemetery in Milford on Sept. 12. She asked the director at E.C. Nurre Funeral Home in Amelia if he’d ever seen anything like the bruising on her father’s neck.
“And he says, ‘No, I’ve never seen anything like this.’ I said, ‘I think they hurt him. And I think they hurt him bad.’ He didn’t say anything. He just let me keep taking pictures,” Maham said.
Nurre partner Dan Branham said the funeral home advised Maham to contact the coroner’s office with her concerns. But it proceeded with the burial and coordinated the disinterment of Meyer’s body when the coroner later requested it.
“It’s not up to us to make those decisions,” Branham said. “That was between the family and the coroner.”
Maham finally caught the break she was seeking in the week after Meyer’s funeral. That’s when a pathologist for the coroner’s office agreed to look at the pictures of her father’s bruises.
“She says, ‘I want him on my table tomorrow.’” Maham recalled. “I said, ‘Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus. Because there’s where my answers are going to come from.’”
‘I want justice for my father’
Four months after Meyer’s death, Maham is working with a Cleveland attorney to pursue a possible lawsuit on behalf of her father’s estate.
“This is one of the most shocking cases I’ve ever been a part of in my career,” said Jeffrey Heller, a partner at Nurenberg Paris. “My law firm’s been in business for almost 100 years, and this is the first time that we have had an individual dug up from the grave for autopsy after death.”
Heller said the nursing home, hospice and funeral home should have notified the coroner about the concerns raised by Maham.
“All of those individuals by law had a duty to notify the coroner when they were aware of the strangle marks on his neck,” Heller said. “Because of the photographs Tammy Maham has, and their time stamps, we know that the strangle marks were evident to these individuals and the facilities prior to death.”
Heller said Maham sent a complaint letter to the Ohio Department of Health, which regulates nursing homes.
And she has communicated with investigators with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, which declined to comment for this story.
“Hamilton County’s sheriff has not informed us of the specific steps that they’re taking to investigate the matter. However, we do know that they have interviewed individuals at Forest Hills Healthcare center,” Heller said.
As she waits for investigators to determine how her father’s injuries happened, Maham is trying to focus on happier memories of her father - like his most recent job repairing lawn equipment and his hunting stories about the deer that got away.
“His spine was crippled from arthritis,” Maham said. “He walked kinda strange. But he never complained. He didn’t come in, ‘Oh, I feel bad.’ He just came in, happy to be there. And he would be telling his stories. Every deer hunting story, every fishing story, he loved that.”
But she also wants to get to the bottom of the problems she witnessed at Forest Hills Healthcare Center.
“I want justice,” Maham said. “I want justice for my father. And I want everyone in that place safe.”
