Claridge Healthcare Center

While this nursing home's overall score was not a highlight, it actually received a somewhat respectable grade in the area of nursing. We gave it a B- for that category. When computing a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.2 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 place actually fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.

One of this nursing home's better category grades came in the area of short-term care. This ended up being its second best category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a B-. Our short-term care grades are arguably more meaningful for individuals requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home's second least favorable category was long-term care, where it received just a D in that area. This is a relatively poor score. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Turning the last category of inspections, we gave this facility a score of D for our inspection category. This proved to be this facility's weakest category. We take a poor grade in this category very seriously. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. We recommend you scrutinize the level of severity of the deficiencies. This particular facility had 5 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they posed a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, we also would like to point out that this place was assessed large government fines recently totaling over $100,000. This typically means that a nursing home's bad performance spanned several years.