The Paramount at Somers Rehab and Nursing Center

To go along with its decent overall grade, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. This is far better than its overall score. Inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few 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 means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

This nursing home's long-term care rating ended up being one of its best features. The nursing home received a B- in this area. Long-term care grades are typically used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 91.45022 percent of its patients. This is a few points lower than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's third best area was short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a C. In our short-term care category, we attempt to create a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at a nursing home's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Moving on to our final area, this nursing home didn't fare well. With a poor grade of F in nursing, this is its weakest grade. Nursing scores are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This place offered only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This place was above average in two of the major areas we focus on, with solid marks for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These data points are generally good indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.