Delmar Center

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable short-term care score this year. We gave it a C in that area, which was the closest thing to a bright spot we can find for this facility. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to assess a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an C. In determining a nursing home's nursing rating, we consider the quantity of hours nurses commit to residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a relatively low total compared with most facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

This nursing home's second lowest category was long-term care, where it received just a D in that category. This is a well below average grade. Long-term care grades in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 43.209877 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.

This facility did not receive a favorable inspection score. We gave it a score of just D in this category. Inspection scores relate to a facility's government inspections. Our inspection scores weigh many items on the nursing home's inspection reports. If you see severe deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is typically a bad sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This nursing home was assessed one deficiency on its inspection report. We were relieved to find that it wasn't in one of the categories that suggest that it created a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility also received 9 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.