Intercommunity Care Center

While we gave this facility an abysmal overall score, we gave it a C for our nursing category. In calculating our nursing ratings, we analyze both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. It performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

Unfortunately, this facility's next highest category is long-term care. As it turns out, with a grade of D in this category, it still performed somewhat badly. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Another issue is the F this facility received in the area of short-term care. In forming our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last measure we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. This was well below average.

Turning to our final category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. We weight this category more heavily than our other categories. When a facility has this poor of an inspection grade, you should expect some severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to resident safety. This particular facility had 6 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they caused a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility also received 10 substantiated complaints in recent years. This is yet another bad sign.