Horizons Care Center

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home performed well in short-term care. We awarded it an impressive grade of A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Short-term care scores are critical for patients seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We looked at the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses spent with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to another of this facility's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections turned out to be one of its best category grades. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

The last area we scored is long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category, which is a poor grade. We wouldn't simply disqualify a facility due to one bad score though. For residents in need of a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 99.082565 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.