Care One at Livingston

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection ratings are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this facility a grade of A- for our short-term care score. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility also received a strong long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last category we assessed is nursing. We awarded this facility a decent score in that area, with a B-. Even though this is not as high as some of this facility's other scores, it is nevertheless not a major area of concern. In calculating a facility's nursing rating, we assess the number of hours nurses are with residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.