Eastgate Health Care Center

On top of earning a great overall score, this nursing home performed even better in our inspections category which is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an A for this category, which is one of our highest grades. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This nursing home fared well in the category of short-term care. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for that category, which happens to be one of our highest scores. Our short-term care grades are considered to be more important for individuals requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility's next most favorable category turned out to be its long-term care score, where it was given a grade of C. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 99.7669 percent of its patients. Finally, 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 an impressively low figure.

Our next category is nursing, where we awarded this nursing home a C in that category. Our nursing grade analyzes the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this metric. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents even once per day.