Arbor Trace Family-first Senior Living

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection score was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This place was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category grades came in the area of short-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a B. In calculating these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility was given its next best category score in the area of long-term care. We gave this facility a grade of C in this category, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. Our long-term care scores are more meaningful for patients requiring more traditional services associated with personal care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 71.11801 percent of its residents. This is several points lower than what we were hoping for. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next category we analyzed was nursing. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is a poor score. This is obviously a major disappointment. Our nursing rating weighs several data points, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This place offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. On top of being below average in nursing hours per resident, this facility also had poor scores in the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This place was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in both of these data points. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These statistics pulled down this facility's nursing grade significantly.