North Park Nursing Center

While we were not very complementary of this facility's overall score, it actually received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best scores in that category with an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. This facility received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

This facility was awarded its next most favorable category grade in the area of long-term care. We awarded this facility a B- in this category, which is a respectable grade. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. This place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Sadly, this nursing home only earned a grade of D for its short-term care grade, which is well below average in this category. In determining these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Based on its poor score in this area, we were not shocked to find this place provided far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

The last area we looked at is nursing, in which this nursing home was given a very poor score in this category as well. We gave it a lowly F for this area, which is definitely very concerning. There are a number of criteria within this grade. Most of these data points reflect the quantity of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To go along with its low total nursing hours per resident, this place had really poor scores in several of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents having falls leading to serious injury. This place was at more than 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is alarming in light of the fact that so many falls could be prevented with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the facility's fate of earning a poor nursing grade.