Shaire Nursing Center

In addition to performing well overall, this facility earned nearly flawless government inspections. Therefore, it earned one of our best scores in that area with an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. The nursing grade is based on several factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place North Carolina in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.

This facility also was awarded a fine long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its third strongest category grade. In that area, this facility received a grade of A. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Switching gears to the last category, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it an A for this category. This topped off a straight A report card. Short-term care grades are commonly used to score a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.