North Cape Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this facility's other achievements is its top-shelf long-term care grade. We awarded them one of our more impressive grades in that category, with a score of A-. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 85.1735 percent of its residents. This is slightly below what we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also was awarded favorable short-term care grades in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded it one of our stronger grades in that category, with a score of B+. In our short-term care grade, we seek to create a sound measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we assessed is nursing. This facility was given a favorable nursing score this year, with a grade of C. While this is not as impressive as several of its other grades, this is nevertheless a decent rating in this category. Nursing grades are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This facility averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is well below average. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused measures. We especially look at the percent of residents who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these problems.