Rockaway Care Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection grade was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave it an A+. Inspection grades are based on many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Additionally, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received strong long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a B. This proved to be the facility's second highest score. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.60724 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's third most favorable area was short-term care. We awarded it a C in this area. This is essentially a middle of the road score in this category. Our short-term care scores are important for patients in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The next area we scored is nursing. It received an abysmal F for this area, which is a poor score. This is clearly a significant concern. We weighed the levels of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses worked with residents, in calculating our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. This nursing home also had terrible scores in some of the quality-based metrics to go along with its weak nursing hours. For starters, we looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers. This nursing home was at more than double the national average in this statistic. This is concerning when you consider that many pressure ulcers are preventable with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the nursing home's fate of receiving a weak nursing grade.