Unc Rex Rehab & Nursing Care Center of Apex

In addition to being a strong facility overall, it also received A+ government inspections recently. Its inspections are nearly perfect. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this facility so favorably is that it was given an A+ short-term care grade. This is flat out as dominant as it gets in this area. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for people in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. There are quite a few factors within this area. Many of these factors reflect levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients even once per day.

The final category we looked at was long-term care, where this facility received a grade of A. This topped off a very strong report card. Not many nursing homes earned an A- or higher in each of our categories. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 97.22222 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.