Peak Resources - Pinelake

Peak Resources - Pinelake is an average-sized nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina. This turns out to be a middle of the pack facility, with an overall grade of C. This place seems to have a few things working in its favor. The best part of this place's report card is its remarkable inspection reports. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section.

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this place really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities performed better in this category. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. This place received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This facility also was awarded a strong long-term care score. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of B in this category, which happens to be one of our more favorable scores. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. While it had 1.74 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was better than the majority of nursing homes due to it having more complex patients.

This facility's second worse category was short-term care, where it earned a grade of just D in that category. This is a well below average grade. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. In this nursing home's case, we found that it offers fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 40.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next area we looked at was nursing, which proved to be this facility's worst area. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is clearly a major disappointment. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provided just 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this nursing home also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This place had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these scores hurt this facility's nursing grade quite a bit.