Premier Health and Rehabilitation Center

Although we were not high on this nursing home overall, we awarded it a grade of B for our inspections category. This grade is much more impressive than the facility's overall grade. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. It is generally in your best interest to avoid places that had a long list of severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even with this deficiency, this place still received a relatively favorable inspection report.

The second best area we gave this nursing home in any category came in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. In computing our long-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 91.44543 percent of its patients. This is a bit lower than we were hoping for but still a respectable figure. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also gave this facility a middle of the pack score in the area of short-term care, where it received a C. In calculating our short-term care grades, we size up a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is frequently a reliable assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. We found that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The final area we graded is nursing. This facility received a very poor grade of F in that category. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility.