Cortland Center

To pair with its decent overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its inspection grade. This grade is far better than its overall grade. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

We also gave this facility a solid grade in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a C. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 93.03797 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Nevertheless, this facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next area we analyzed is short-term care, where this facility received a grade of C in this category. In our short-term care rating, we try to craft a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this facility provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The tricky part is determining what bearing this had on quality of care. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

This facility's weakest area was nursing, which is the final category we looked at. Sadly, it received an F in this category. Even with multiple acceptable scores in other categories, this score is still alarming so we would like to to make sure you are aware. When determining our nursing grades, we look at both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. In addition to ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this facility also had poor marks in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This nursing home was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in both of these data points. This is a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are preventable with better nursing care. These statistics pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade significantly.