Trucare Living Centers-Columbus

While this nursing home received a decent overall rating, its inspections rating is notably better than its overall grade. Due to a strong inspection report this year, it received a strong score in that area with a B+. Inspection scores account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable score in our long-term care category. We awarded this facility an above average grade of B in this category. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 95.90164 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of D. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these datapoints to be measures of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the next category, this facility didn't perform very well. With a very poor grade of F in short-term care, this was its poorest category grade. With our short-term care score, we strive to forge a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.