Affinity Healthcare Center

Although we didn't give this place a good overall grade, we actually gave it a relatively strong grade in the category of inspections, where it received a B. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. It is generally best to avoid places that have a long list of severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a solid inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

This nursing home's second highest category ended up being long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. When calculating a facility's nursing rating, we look at the amount of time nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

This facility's weakest area is short-term care, which is the final area we scored. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is generally a solid measure of the facility's rehabilitation. With a score of this caliber for this area, we weren't stunned to learn that this nursing home was well below average in two of the key staffing metrics we assess. It supplied significantly fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other facilities. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.