Royal Cape Cod Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

We awarded this nursing home an A for our short-term care score. This score is much more impressive than the nursing home's overall score. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is often a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home received a great nursing grade. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. We assessed the qualifications of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses were with patients, in determining our rating in this area. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning patients more frequently.

This facility earned its third best grade in the area of inspections. Inspection scores are based on a nursing home's recent government inspection reports. We awarded this facility a C in this category. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility had 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were category G through L deficiencies. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We really didn't consider anything on this nursing home's inspection reports to be overly concerning.

The final category we scored was long-term care, turned out to be this facility's weakest area. We gave this facility a grade of D in this category. This really is one of the couple of weak points on a strong profile. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 96.414345 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.