Rafael Convalescent Hospital

Although we did not rate this facility favorably overall, we want to draw your attention to its relatively favorable short-term care grade. We awarded it a respectable grade of B+ in this area. Short-term care grades are meaningful for individuals requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

We also want to point out that this facility received a decent grade in our nursing category. We awarded it a grade of B- in the area. Nursing ratings are mostly tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This figure is far below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents more frequently.

This nursing home's second least favorable category was long-term care, where it received just a D in that area. This is a relatively poor grade. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. After considering the volume of nursing care, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. We were pleased to discover that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. To our surprise, this place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Moving on the last category of government inspections, we gave this facility a grade of just D for our inspection category. This proved to be this nursing home's weakest category. We take a weak score in this category very seriously. One of the most important factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We recommend you pay close attention to the severity of those deficiencies. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, we would like to point out that this nursing home received large government fines recently of more than $50,000. This often indicates that CMS inspectors became frustrated after several years of bad health inspections.