Peak Healthcare - The Pines

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this area. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning patients at least once a day.

We were also pleasantly surprised to find that this facility earned a reasonably solid short-term care rating in our assessment. We gave it a grade of C in this area. In determining our short-term care grades, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is generally a reliable measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this nursing home's inspection grades where it received an F. This generally means we found some red flags on the inspection reports. We would advise paying close attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection grade. We recommend you pay close attention to the level of severity of the deficiencies. This particular nursing home was hit with one category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more serious categories of deficiencies. This generally indicates that the deficiencies found by the government inspectors had the potential to pose actual harm to patients. We are also concerned by the fact that this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

The final area we scored is long-term care. This facility received a bottom of the barrel grade of F in that category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means the facility did not perform well in our measures relating to patient care. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. We were a bit concerned this nursing home vaccinated 77.818184 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is quite a few points lower than what we were hoping for. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.