Optima Care Harborview

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it was awarded a dominant short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care ended up being its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. In the area of short-term care, we seek to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Nursing grades are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a relatively low total compared with most facilities. Lastly, our nursing scores also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

Moving on to our fourth area, this facility really did not fare well. Due to an abysmal grade of F in that area, this is clearly this facility's weakest grade. If you are seeking services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care scores. One of the criteria we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Fortunately, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 98.84792 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.