Clatsop Care Center

On top of earning a strong overall score, this nursing home performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. Short-term care scores are meaningful for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also performed at a high level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that area with an A-. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category typically have few of these severe deficiencies. 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.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing score analyzes quite a few datapoints, but the main one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home 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 typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents even once per day.

Switching gears to the fourth category, this facility was awarded a respectable long-term care rating. While this was not as impressive as many of its other scores, this is truly not a poor grade. Our long-term care grade assesses a facility's personal care instead of the highly skilled nursing and healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 92 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be a bit less than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Fortunately, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.