Castleton Health Care Center

Although we didn't give this place a good overall score, we actually gave it a relatively strong grade in the area of inspections, where it received a B. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid facilities with too many deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

In addition, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received impressive short-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our better grades in this area, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the nursing home's second best score. With our short-term care category, we endeavor to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The final statistic we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it was above average with 51.3 percent of its residents returning home.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of B-. Our nursing grade consists of quite a few datapoints, but the main consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grade also includes some applicable quality-based metrics. While this place excelled in terms of quantity of nursing hours, it lagged a bit in some of the subcategories that focused on quality. This facility's nursing grade was hurt by its weak performance in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers. We found that 15.1 percent of this nursing home's patients were suffering from pressure ulcers. Since many pressure ulcers can be avoided with sufficient nursing protocols, we reduce a nursing home's nursing score when we see this kind of frequency of pressure ulcers.

Moving on to the last category, this facility really did not perform well in this area either. Due to a poor grade of F in long-term care, this is about as bad as it gets. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means the nursing home didn't perform well in our measures relating to patient care. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccines. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to only 83.13253 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this facility was actually decent at limiting hospitalizations. While it had 2.14 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was not as bad since it had some more complex patients. This was its best score in this category