First Shamrock Care Center

While this place's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection ratings are tied to many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important item to look for on these inspections. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent risk to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

We were also stunned to find that this nursing home received a somewhat respectable long-term care score this year. We gave it a grade of C in that category. Long-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of nursing care. This means a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine medical services. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this nursing home vaccinated 88 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is several points lower than what we expected. Nevertheless, this facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also didn't perform too badly in the area of short-term care. In fact, we awarded it a C in that category, which happens to be among its higher grades. In crafting our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

The final category we graded was nursing, which ended up being this facility's weakest area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that area. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This place provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.