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 4.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

In our next category, we gave this facility a rock-bottom F in the area of long-term care. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means the nursing home didn't perform well in our measures relating to resident care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this nursing home gave the vaccine to a relatively low 79.12371 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.

Turning to our final category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. We weight this category more heavily than our other categories. You should pay special attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection score. We would pay close attention to the level of severity of those deficiencies. This particular facility was hit with a category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more severe categories of deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies found by the government inspectors had the potential to cause actual harm to residents. Another area of concern is that CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.