Clarence Care Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this facility also earned an elite long-term care grade. We awarded them one of our better grades in that area, with an A-. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. We scrutinized the levels of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses worked with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home was awarded an acceptable short-term care score of C. In computing these short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this facility submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.