Amberwood Gardens

We would like to point out that this nursing home received favorable marks for short-term care this year. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a B. This proved to be the nursing home's best grade and helped its profile quite a bit. Our short-term care ratings are probably most critical for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home's inspection grade also was better than its overall grade. Due to a quality inspection report this year, it received one of our better grades in that category with a B. Inspection scores weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility also was awarded a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it a grade of B in that category, which is one of our better. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Our next area is nursing, where we awarded this facility a grade of B- in that area. The nursing grade includes a host of data points. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spend 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. Lastly, we look at quality-based metrics, such as the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are indicators of the quality of nursing care.