Belterra Health & Rehab

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. We believe that one of the most critical factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially look at the severity of those deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that 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. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Remarkably, we awarded this facility a grade of C for our long-term care score, which really isn't too bad of a score. Our long-term care scores are more meaningful for patients in need of more conventional assistance associated with activities of daily living. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 92.579506 percent of its residents, which is slightly below what we were hoping for. Fortunately, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home received an F for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade assesses a handful of factors, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This facility averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is quite a bit below the national average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The last category we analyzed was short-term care, where this nursing home was given a poor grade in this category as well. Sadly, it received an F for this area, which is obviously a major concern. In determining our short-term care grades, we size up the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is generally a fair assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Based on its score in this area, we were not surprised to discover that this nursing home was well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its patients based on the data we looked at. Frankly, this was what we expected here. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.