Freeburg Care Center

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our best scores. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. This facility received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in long-term care. This facility earned a B+ in this area, which turns out to be one of our more favorable scores. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 98.81657 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the senior population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality measures. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this metric. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients even once per day.

The next area we assessed is short-term care, is this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this nursing home a D in this area. This really is one of just a couple of dings of a very solid profile. Our short-term care grade is often used to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. It looks like this place was subpar in multiple staffing areas we assessed. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 3 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.