Plattsburgh Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A. Our inspection grades are tied to several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

In addition, we also wanted to note that this facility was awarded strong long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with a B. This proved to be the facility's second strongest grade. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 83.870964 percent of its patients. This is somewhat lower than we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. When computing a facility's nursing rating, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is far below average. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place.

The final area we rated is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this area. In forming these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.