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 B- 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.

Sadly, this facility received a grade of just D in our inspection category. This is well below average grade. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. This nursing home had one deficiency by government inspectors. Fortunately, it wasn't in one of the categories that suggest that it created a threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility also received 9 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.

The final category we graded is long-term care. We gave it an abysmal F in this area, which is a rock bottom grade. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is a bad sign for resident care and it may indicate that the facility is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home vaccinated just 80.06135 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.