College Park Rehabilitation Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection grade. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facilities second most favorable category is short-term care. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is basically a slightly below average grade in this area. Short-term care grades are generally used to gauge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. The last item we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the pack grade in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a C. In computing our long-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. This nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning to the next area, this facility was awarded a decent nursing grade of C. Our nursing grade includes a handful of subcategories, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did very well in this area. This is generally an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients at least once a day.