Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns

Safire Rehabilitation of Northtowns is the sole option we found in Tonawanda, New York. This is a relatively poor nursing home, with an overall grade of D. Based on our analysis, this facility likely isn't the best fit for most prospective residents. If you aren't deterred by this facility's profile, you can continue reading to learn more about its category grades. We discuss inspections in the next section.

Although we didn't rate this facility favorably overall, we actually gave it an excellent score in the category of inspections, where it earned an A. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. It is generally in your best interest to avoid facilities that have too many severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also gave this nursing home a decent grade in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a C. Our short-term care ratings are probably most important for residents needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of physical therapy per week to its residents. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 40.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

We were surprised to find that this facility also excelled in the category of nursing. In fact, we gave it a grade of D for that category, which is one of our best scores. Nursing grades are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is not a very impressive figure. Unfortunately, this place also had abysmal scores in some of the quality-based metrics to pair with its weak nursing hours. We looked at the percent of patients suffering pressure ulcers and we were very disappointed. This facility was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this statistic.

The last area we analyzed is long-term care. Sadly, it received a lowly F in this area, which is a bottom of the barrel score. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 98.28767 percent of its patients, which is more than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.64 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.