Morningside Center

This facility received a strong overall grade as mentioned above, but we wanted to point out its excellent long-term care rating. We gave them a grade of A in this category. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 66.49484 percent of its residents. This is a few points below what we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also received top notch health inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing grade focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a patient more often.

The next area we looked at was short-term care. We awarded this facility a decent grade in this area, with a C. Although this wasn't on par with a few of its other scores, it is nevertheless not a bad grade. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the number of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.