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 B- 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. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed 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 patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The next category we scored is long-term care. It received an F in this area, which is a rock bottom score. This is clearly a major disappointment. Facilities that don't score well in this category often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility vaccinated 90.41534 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly less than average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.