Dunkirk Rehabilitation & Nursing Center

While we did not rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively solid government inspections in recent years. We gave it a B+ in this area, which is much better than its overall grade. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid places with a bunch of severe deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in 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 safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This facility's second most favorable area was its short-term care score, where it was given a C. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The key is determining what effect this had on the quality of care. The final measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

This facility's third most favorable category is its long-term care grade, where it was given a grade of C. Long-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's amount of care. This includes a vast range of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 97.47899 percent of its residents, which is better than the average nursing home. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we assessed was nursing. This nursing home was given a bottom of the barrel grade of F in that category. When determining a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses commit to patients and the skill levels of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.