The Peaks Care Center

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility earned an excellent long-term care score. We gave it an A in that area. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 91.954025 percent of its residents. This is a bit less than we were hoping for but still a decent percentage. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also want to point out the fact that this nursing home received a superb score of A in our short-term care category. In our short-term care assessment, we seek to create a fair barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze a facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to the next category, this facility also performed admirably in the nursing category. We awarded it a B+ for this area. This topped off a very impressive profile. Nursing scores are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.