A nursing home in downtown Winthrop closed Monday, and the 30 residents who were staying there have been transferred to different long-term care facilities around the state, said Edward Hunt, who owns and administered Winthrop Manor Long Term Care and Rehab Center.

The Western Avenue facility closed for a mix of reasons, Hunt said. The building was in poor shape and required considerable investment, he said, and the federal Medicaid program — known as MaineCare — was not reimbursing the full amount to house and care for residents there.

“I never made any money in four or five years,” Hunt said. “It was difficult. Unfortunately, MaineCare doesn’t pay enough. For every dollar I spent, I got about 90 cents back.”

While Winthrop Manor has housed an average of 40 residents over the last five years, Hunt said he had limited enrollments in the last year of operation, knowing that he eventually would close the nursing home.

The 30 residents who remained this month were transferred to facilities in different parts of the state Monday, Hunt said, including Lewiston, Farmington, Madison and the Brunswick and Bangor areas.

While a few residents wanted to stay in the Winthrop area and were placed on waiting lists at local facilities, Hunt said most family members were satisfied with the new placements.

A spokesman for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that Winthrop Manor had “fulfilled its closure obligations,” but the details of those obligations were not immediately available.

Hunt, who has owned the home for almost 12 years and also runs an assisted-living facility in Biddeford, said he is looking to the sell the Winthrop building. A former farm building, it was first converted to a care facility in 1956 and was showing its age in recent years. At least one furnace and two commercial laundry machines were 25 years old and in need of replacement, Hunt said.

But Hunt emphasized that he made all necessary safety investments in the home. He also highlighted the facility’s five-star rating with the federal Medicare program and pointed to a federal survey last year that noted just one deficiency at Winthrop Manor.

According to a record of that April 2015 inspection posted on the Medicare website, the facility hadn’t developed a comprehensive plan for a patients with incontinence issues. The agency deemed the harm from that deficiency to be minimal and found Winthrop Manor had corrected it within two weeks.

“We’ve always focused on care,” Hunt said.

The challenge to Hunt’s business going forward, he said, was that shrinking reimbursements for Medicaid and Medicare services would not cover the upgrades needed to maintain his 46-bed home.

“I don’t blame anybody,” he said of his reasons for closing. “But for us, it’s too little too late.”

Charles Eichacker — 621-5642

ceichacker@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @ceichacker