Clarkson Health Care

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is as good as it gets in this very important area. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A. Nursing scores are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning our next category, we awarded this facility a grade of A for its long-term care score. This is a very strong rating. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. 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 only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final category we graded was this facility's weakest category. Nevertheless, even its lowest point would actually be a highlight for most facilities. We awarded it a favorable grade of B for short-term care. Our short-term care grade is often employed to judge a facility's rehabilitation services. To have highly scored rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 4.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.