Buffalo Center

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Inspection ratings are based on pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

This facility also didn't fare too badly in the category of long-term care. Indeed, we gave it a grade of C in that area, which ended up being among its more favorable scores. Our long-term care grades are based on the facility's amount of nursing care. This means a vast spectrum of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated 71.20743 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be several points lower than average. Nevertheless, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We were also surprised to find that this facility received a decent nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of C in that category. There are a number of datapoints included in this area. Many of the subcategories reflect the quantity of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The last category we looked at was short-term care. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this area, which is a poor score. In determining these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Considering its abysmal rating in this category, we weren't stunned to learn that this nursing home offers substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who 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 2.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.