Schuyler County Nursing Home

This facility really fared well in the category of long-term care, where it received an A. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.07692 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home actually received a solid government inspection report this year as well, with few major dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it earned one of our better grades in that category with a B-. We were surprised this facility received multiple category grades of this caliber. We believe that one of the most important factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially look at the severity of those deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. Our nursing grade features several factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a relatively low total compared to most facilities. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place.

This facility's least impressive area was short-term care, which is the final category we assessed. For this area, we gave this facility a D. In computing these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, we learned that this place provides fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.