Bernice Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

While we were not high on this facility's overall score, it actually received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our highest scores in that category with an A. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid facilities with a list of severe deficiencies flagged. While this place had some deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

We also awarded this facility a decent score in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a C. Long-term care grades are used to assess a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. Frankly, we were a bit concerned this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to just 84.571434 percent of its residents. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.23 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.

We were stunned to find that this facility also excelled in the category of nursing. We gave it a grade of D for that category, which is one of our highest grades. Our nursing score focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This particular facility averaged a meager 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This statistic is well below average. This facility also had abysmal scores in some of the quality-based measures to go along with its weak nursing hour totals. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and we were quite disappointed. This place was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign in light of the fact that many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. This metric helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.

The last category we scored is short-term care, ended up being this nursing home's weakest area. We gave this facility a grade of D in that area. In our short-term care score, we attempt to create a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. With a grade in this range in this category, we weren't shocked to find that this nursing home was well below average in many staffing areas we assess. In fact, it offered significantly fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.