Corning Therapy and Living Center

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Few facilities performed better in this area. Inspection scores are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. This is certainly a good sign for the quality of care at this facility.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an B-. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in calculating our score in this area. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

We also awarded this facility a middle of the pack grade in the category of long-term care, where it received a C. Our long-term care ratings are more critical for folks in need of more conventional assistance associated with activities of daily living. After assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 96.79144 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is more than the average nursing home. This nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next area we assessed is short-term care, which was a weak link for this facility. We awarded this facility a grade of just D in the area of short-term care. Short-term care grades are generally employed to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. With a score of this caliber in this category, we weren't stunned to learn this place was well below average in several staffing areas we focus on. It provided significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most facilities. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.