Consulate Health Care of Norfolk

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in that category with a score of B-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D. We assessed the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the number of hours those nurses spent with residents, in calculating our grade in this category. This place provided only 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these metrics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the area of long-term care, this nursing home was awarded a grade of just D in this category. For prospective residents in need of a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 96.017075 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.

Moving on to our next category, this facility didn't perform well here either. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in short-term care, this is about as terrible as it gets. Short-term care grades are meaningful for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Given its weak rating in this area, we were not stunned to find that this place provides far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.