Highland Care Center

To pair with its decent overall grade, we awarded this facility a grade of A for our inspections rating. This grade is far more impressive than its overall rating. Inspection scores are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also gave this facility an impressive score in long-term care. This nursing home received a grade of B in this category, which happens to be one of our higher scores. For patients seeking a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 82.99199 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is slightly less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also earned a strong nursing score. We awarded it a F in this area. Our nursing score weighs a variety of subcategories. The most important variable is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This place provided only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

This nursing home's worst area is short-term care, which is the last area we assessed. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this area. In spite of several respectable grades in other areas, this grade is still disappointing so we wanted to make a note of it. Our short-term care scores are important for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. With a grade this poor for this area, we weren't shocked to discover that this nursing home was well below average in the two key staffing figures we focus on. The nursing home offered far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most nursing homes. Lastly, we considered the number of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.