Arbor Terrace Healthcare Center

Although this facility's overall score was terrible, it performed pretty well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B for that area, which is one of our better scores. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is generally in your best interest to avoid places that have a long list of deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem 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.

Incredibly, we gave this nursing home a C for its long-term care score, which is not too bad of a score. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its nursing grade, which was actually one of its better category grades. Our nursing category weighs several subcategories, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 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-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This nursing home performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these metrics to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we looked at is short-term care, in which this nursing home was given a bottom of the barrel score in this category as well. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this category, which is obviously very concerning. Our short-term care grades are thought to be more meaningful for individuals requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Considering its poor score in this area, we weren't surprised to find this place provides substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.