Bellevue Care Center

To pair with its favorable overall score, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this facility a score of A for our long-term care grade. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's third most favorable area was its short-term care grade, where it was given a C. In our short-term care score, we seek to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The last category we rated is nursing. We awarded this facility a solid grade in this area, with a grade of C. Although this isn't on par with many of its other scores, it is still not the end of the world. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the amount of time nurses commit to residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this area. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning patients more frequently.