Rainier Rehabilitation

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home received high marks in the area of long-term care as well. In fact, it received one of our strongest scores in that area with a area of A-. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 96.76471 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the senior population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Our nursing score assesses several components, however, the most important one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is far below average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents more often.

The next category we assessed was short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in our short-term care category, making this its weakest category grade. In computing our short-term care grades, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is considered to be a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. It appears that this facility was below average in several staffing metrics we focus on. The facility provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this nursing home's short-term care score.