Aperion Care Springfield

Although we graded this facility extremely poorly overall, it received a more respectable long-term care rating this year. We gave it a C in that area. In our long-term care category, we focus more on the volume of services provided by a facility, as well as a series of quality metrics. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This place earned just a D in the area of inspections. Unfortunately, this was its second best grade. Inspection ratings weigh many items found on the facility's recent inspection reports. If you see too many deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is generally the worst sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to the well being of residents. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they posed a threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, we also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received significant government fines in recent years of over $50,000. This generally indicates that CMS inspectors became fed up after multiple years of failed inspections.

Our next area we graded was short-term care, where this facility received an F. In forming our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Based on its score in this area, we weren't surprised to learn that this place was well below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours offered to its patients based on the figures we looked at. Frankly, this was what we expected here. The last item we considered in this area is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home did not perform very well in this area either. With a very poor grade of F in nursing, this is really as terrible as it gets. There are a number of criteria within this grade. Most of the factors relate to nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these metrics to be measures of the quality of nursing care.