Belterra Health & Rehab

This nursing home's overall grade was bolstered by the fact that it has received favorable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in this category, with a B+. This is a much better score than the facility's overall grade. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this nursing home's better category scores was in the area of long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B. It actually performed better than most nursing homes in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. There are a variety of datapoints included in this category. Most of these datapoints are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This facility provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below the national average. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

The final area we graded was short-term care, which proved to be a low point for this facility. We gave this facility a grade of D in our short-term care category. Our short-term care ratings are arguably more critical for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. With its poor rating in this category, we weren't shocked to discover that this facility offered far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.8 percent of its residents returning home.