Clifton Rehabilitation Nursing Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our shot-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. When facilities receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.42693 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also was strong in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A-. Only a select group of nursing homes performed better in this area. In calculating these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Another impressive feature of this facility is its inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.

The last category we analyzed was nursing. In that category, we gave this facility a favorable grade of B. The nursing grade features many subcategories. The most important variable is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 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 frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.