"I'm trying to make a fresh start," Dan Dabney said in a telephone interview from Clinton, where Tina Conner operates Birchtree Healthcare.

Birchtree lost certification and was dropped from the Medicare and Medicaid programs in July following a devastating report of deficiencies. It now has 13 residents and 103 empty beds, Dabney said.

Conner, who had a two-year extramarital affair with Patton, claims Patton caused regulators to clamp down on Birchtree after she ended their relationship in 1999. Patton has acknowledged the affair but denied using his position to aid or damage her business.

Dabney, a consultant whom Conner called in from Louisville, said he and the nursing home's attorney, Fred Radolovich, met with officials of the Cabinet for Health Services in Frankfort on Tuesday. If all goes well, Birchtree could be certified again in a few weeks, Dabney said.

Little has gone well for Birchtree to date. Dabney said he fired the business manager this week because she did not aggressively pursue payments. "I never could get a read on where we were financially," Dabney said.

Twenty months ago, the nursing home's accountant said in a letter that Birchtree had financial problems long before it was cited for allegedly providing poor care.

The business office was rife with personnel problems from the time Conner and her former husband bought the property in 1995, Leslie Ellis, a certified public accountant in Paducah, said in a letter to then-Medicaid Commissioner Dennis Boyd in February 2001.

Ellis said he had found unbilled claims totaling $350,000 and was trying to get payment for at least part of them. A business office manager the Conners hired disappeared when Ellis started examining her billing practices, the letter said.

"Never in my career have I witnessed the problems within a business office that the Conners have experienced with Birchtree," Ellis' letter said. It said old claims "need to be paid or the facility and its owners probably will not be able to survive. "

The Associated Press obtained the letter under the Kentucky Open Records Act. Ellis' firm in Paducah declined comment on it, citing client confidentiality.

Boyd, now a consultant at the University of Louisville medical school, said he remembered meeting with Conner but recalled few details.