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 nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is significantly below average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it did well in this subcategory. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a resident more frequently.

The next area we analyzed is short-term care, where this nursing home was given a grade of C in this category. With our short-term care grade, we endeavor to create a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Switching gears to the next category, we awarded this nursing home a D for our long-term care category. This was the nursing home's worst category rating. Unfortunately, this category hurt the nursing home's overall profile to some degree. Nursing homes that don't fare well in this category typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 81.78914 percent of its patients. This is significantly lower than average. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.