North Park Senior Living

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility performed well in inspections, which is based on the facility's inspection reports. We gave it an A in that category. Inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area tend to have 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 place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing score assesses several datapoints, but the primary consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.4 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we assessed was short-term care. This facility was given a favorable short-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Switching gears to our fourth area, this nursing home was given an excellent long-term care score. Although this is not as good as a few of its other scores, this remains one of our better grades a facility can receive. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.