Belaire Health Care Center

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility really outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in this category with an A+. Inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

We also gave this facility a strong score in long-term care. This nursing home earned a B in this area, which turns out to be one of our more favorable grades. For prospective patients looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 65.19608 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is somewhat less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Our nursing score analyzes several factors, but the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is a very low figure. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place.

The next category we looked at was short-term care, was this facility's weakest category. We gave this nursing home a D in that area. This really was one of just a couple of weak links on an otherwise strong report card. Our short-term care ratings are critical for people in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we discovered that this facility offers less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last measure we looked at in this area 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 4.9 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.