Ballard Center

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. Nursing grades are largely based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat concerning figure as it is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

We were also surprised to discover that this facility received a solid short-term care grade in our assessment. We awarded it a grade of B- in this area. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

Among this facility's alarming category grades was an F for its inspection grade. More often than not, this means we found some red flags on the facility's inspection reports. For places with bad inspection ratings, you should focus on any severe deficiencies found on their recent inspection reports. This particular facility had a category G through L deficiency, which are among the more severe categories of deficiencies. This generally indicates that the deficiencies uncovered by the government inspectors had the potential to create actual harm to residents. Another red flag is that CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care. We gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is a bottom of the barrel score. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care likely don't provide the type of consistent around the clock care that some other facilities offer. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. We were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated a relatively low 81.65375 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.