Charles T Sitrin Health Care Center

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also performed well in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Very few nursing homes fared this well in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its elite profile, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care area. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. Our short-term care grades are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The next area we assessed was long-term care. This facility received an above average long-term care score, with a B+ in this category. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 94.932434 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last area we rated was nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. This actually ended up being this facility's least impressive category. A nursing home is doing something right when it's lowest grade still outperforms most facilities. Our nursing grade includes quite a few data points, however, the main consideration is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.