Atrium Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing

To go along with its relatively modest overall score, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its inspection grade. This grade is far more impressive than its overall score. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This facility also was given a favorable score in our long-term care category. We gave this nursing home an above average grade of B in this area. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 50.903122 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is a bit less than we expected but still a decent percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility wound up receiving a a terrible grade in our short-term care category. It was given a lowly F in this area. In forming these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Given its abysmal rating in this category, we were not shocked to learn this place offered far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The final item we considered in this category is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.3 percent of its patients returning home.

The next category we looked at is nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. It received an F in this category, which is clearly a major disappointment. Nursing scores are primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is not a very impressive figure. This nursing home also had terrible scores in some of the quality-based measures to go along with its low nursing hours. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and we were quite disappointed. This nursing home was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many pressure ulcers could be avoided with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this facility's nursing rating significantly.