Carrara

This nursing home earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent health inspections in recent years. We gave them an A+ in this category. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This nursing home was given its next most favorable category grade in the category of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of C in this category, which is an acceptable score. Our short-term care grades are probably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Turning to the category of long-term care, this facility was awarded just a D in that category. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is more than the average nursing home. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

The final category we looked at was nursing, which is this facility's least impressive area. It received a lowly F for this category, which is clearly a major concern. Nursing scores are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, this facility's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing ratings. This facility performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.