Qualicare Nursing Home

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an B. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses were with patients, in determining our grade in this category. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident at least once a day.

The third highest area we gave this nursing home in any area came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. Short-term care grades are crucial for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. It does not look like this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

The final area we looked at is long-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in our long-term care category, leaving this as the nursing home's weakest area. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 96.296295 percent of its residents, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.