North Star Ranch Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center

We want to point out that this nursing home outperformed its overall grade in the category of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best grades in that area with an A-. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category grades was in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. It actually fared better than most facilities in this area. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. The nursing category analyzes a handful of factors, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is a very low figure. Lastly, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

The last category we graded is short-term care. For that category, we awarded this facility a C. Our short-term care grades are based on a facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.