New York-Presbyterian Queens

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive scores, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that category. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. We were not able to find information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 7.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing score assesses several components, but the most important one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the final area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A+ for its long-term care rating. This finished off a very strong profile. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care scores. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.