North Star Rehabilitation and Care Community

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better grades in that area, with a grade of A-. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some 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 the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category grades was in the area of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a B. It actually outperformed most facilities in this category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of C. Our nursing category consists of several datapoints, most of which are based on nursing hours. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home really didn't perform very well. Due to a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is this nursing home's poorest area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means the facility did not perform well in our measures relating to patient care. One of the criteria we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccines. We were a bit worried that this facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to a relatively low 85.18519 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.