Little Neck Care Center

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

In addition, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B in our short-term care category. This is one of our higher grades. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a meaningful measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. In determining a nursing home's nursing grade, we consider the quantity of hours nurses are with patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this statistic. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

Turning to the last category, this nursing home really did not fare very well. Due to a very poor grade of F in long-term care, this was its worst grade. Nursing homes that do not fare well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 87.58865 percent of its residents. This is quite a bit less than what we were hoping for. To our surprise, this facility was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.