Apple Creek Health and Rehab

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care category, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.98305 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we gave this facility an A- for inspections. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility is also strong in the category of short-term care, where it was awarded a score of B. It performed better than most facilities in this category. In crafting these short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. We were not able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 6.9 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The final area we scored is nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B-. This turned out to be this nursing home's worst category. This is still not a poor grade. Our nursing rating is primarily associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared to most other nursing homes. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.