North Gate Health Care Facility

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Inspection scores are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it was awarded a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, long-term care is its second most favorable category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 99.648506 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next category we analyzed was short-term care, where this facility's grade lagged a bit behind as some of its other scores. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a D, which is a relatively poor grade. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is generally a meaningful measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. It looks like this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. It provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents that were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The final category we graded is nursing, which turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. We awarded this nursing home a D in this area. Sadly, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall grade a bit. Our nursing grade is primarily based on the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home offered a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also looked at some quality measures in calculating our nursing scores. This place was above average in two of the metrics we focus on, with good marks for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care available.