University Place

To pair with its strong overall score, we awarded this place an A for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility 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 didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility received high marks in the area of short-term care as well. In fact, we gave it one of our strongest scores in that area with a score of A-. In determining these short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. We analyzed the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the number of hours the nurses worked with patients, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning residents more often.

The final area we looked at was long-term care. We gave this nursing home a D in our long-term care category, rendering this the facility's worst area. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.