Apex Rehabilitation & Care Center

This facility received a quality overall score as described above, but we especially wanted to point out its nearly flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility fared well in the area of long-term care. As a result, we gave it a score of A- for that area, which happens to be one of our higher grades. Facilities that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 97.95598 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this was not one of this facility's strong suits. We awarded it a grade of D in this category. Clearly, this facility performed much better in the categories discussed above. Our nursing rating analyzes the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This facility offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we scored is short-term care, which turned out to be this facility's worst area. We gave this facility a grade of D in this category. Naturally, this score pulled down the nursing home's overall grade to some degree. In our short-term care grade, we try to create a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.