Core of Dale

While we were not high on this nursing home overall, we gave it a B in nursing. Nursing scores are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident more frequently.

This facility earned a grade of C for our inspections rating. This was certainly better than its other grades. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were in categories G through L. This indicates that it dodged the more serious classes of deficiencies. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

The third category we assessed is short-term care, where this facility received a C in this category. Our short-term care scores are thought to be more critical for those needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This facility's worst area was long-term care, which is the final category we looked at. For this area, we awarded this nursing home a D. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective 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. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 99.090904 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.