Wingate of Ulster

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall score is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher scores in that category, with a grade of A. This is a much better score than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Another one of this nursing home's higher category scores came in the category of short-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a B+. In forming our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also gave this nursing home a middle of the pack score in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 95.323746 percent of its patients for pneumonia. This facility also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Moving on to our final area, this nursing home was awarded an acceptable nursing grade of C. Our nursing rating is based on several subcategories, however, the main consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This place provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure as it is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.