Applewood Living Center

While this nursing home earned a decent overall score, its inspections score is notably better than its overall grade. Due to a strong government inspection report this year, it earned one of our better scores in that area with a grade of B+. Inspection ratings are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

In addition, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B in our nursing category. This is one of our better grades. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the amount of time nurses are seeing residents and the level of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving patients even once per day.

We also awarded this nursing home a solid grade in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. In our short-term care grade, we try to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually well below the national average.

Moving on to the fourth category, this facility was given a C in long-term care, which is generally a decent grade. Long-term care grades are essential for people needing personal care. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We were concerned by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 29.230768 percent of its patients against pneumonia. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.