Shuksan Healthcare Center

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we want to emphasize its excellent short-term care grade. We gave them an impressive grade of A- in this area. Short-term care scores are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. Our nursing rating is largely tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 nursing home 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 having a protocol of moving residents more often.

Turning to our inspection category, it appears this nursing home has received respectable inspections in recent years as well. We gave it a B- in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home was given a C in long-term care, which is generally a respectable grade. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the data points we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 98.9899 percent of its residents. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.