Alden Debes

Although we were not high on this place overall, we awarded it a B+ for our inspections category. This grade is much better than the facility's overall grade. Our inspection grades are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these reports. Most importantly, you should avoid facilities that have severe deficiencies linked to risks to resident well being. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you 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. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. Nursing scores are primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this subcategory. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents more often.

This facility's third most favorable area came in the area of short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a C. In calculating our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Turning to our final area, this nursing home really did not perform very well in this area either. Due to a very poor grade of F in long-term care, this is about as terrible as it gets. For patients in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 97.009346 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home also keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.