Corning Specialty Care

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher 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 highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Building on its strong performance in other categories, we awarded this nursing home an B+ for nursing. We assessed the skill-level of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses were with residents, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state 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 policy of turning residents more frequently.

The third area we looked at is short-term care. This nursing home was awarded an above average short-term care grade, with a grade of B in the area. Short-term care scores are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last category we looked at is long-term care. We gave it a C in that category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this area. Our long-term care grade focuses on a facility's assistance with daily living rather than the highly skilled nursing and medical services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 99 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.