Olympia Transitional Care and Rehabilitation

On top of receiving a great overall grade, this place also received first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in that area, with an A-. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. Surprisingly, this facility received a category L deficiency, which is not what we expected based on its inspection grade. This category means inspectors identified a widespread deficiency putting patient safety or health in immediate danger. In spite of this major red flag, other aspects of this facility's inspection report gave us some hope.

Among this facility's other strengths is its dominant short-term care score. It received one of our better grades in that category, with a score of A-. Short-term care grades are crucial for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our higher grades in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. For residents in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 93.04029 percent of its residents, which is slightly less than we were hoping for. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next category we graded was this facility's weakest category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still gave it an acceptable grade of B- for nursing. There are a number of criteria included in this area. Many of the subcategories reflect staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this place got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did very well in this metric. This is often a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.