Clatsop Care Center

We want to point out that this facility earned a much better grade for short-term care than it received overall. It received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our short-term care ratings are meaningful for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Another one of this nursing home's stronger areas was in the category of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

This facility's inspection grade was yet another category grade that was superior to the nursing home's overall grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

The final category we analyzed was long-term care, which is this facility's weakest category. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously very disappointing. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal 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 patients. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 98.8764 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.