Ballard Nursing Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this nursing home's more favorable category grades was in the area of long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a B. It actually performed better than most nursing homes in this category. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 62.22222 percent of its residents. This is slightly less than we anticipated but still a respectable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another strength of this nursing home is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of D. Our nursing rating analyzes quite a few datapoints, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is an alarmingly low total. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This place performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these metrics to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we scored was short-term care. It received an F in this area, which is an abysmal grade. This is obviously a major concern. With our short-term care grade, we strive to craft a fair gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.1 percent of its patients returning home. This was well below the national average.