Arbor Trail Rehab and Skilled Nursing Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category. In that category, we awarded this facility an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a score of A- for that area, which turns out to be one of our most favorable grades. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, 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.

Turning to our third category, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this area. With our short-term care rating, we attempt to forge a fair measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly-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 facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The final category we assessed is nursing. This facility received a strong nursing grade in our assessment, with a grade of B-. While this is not as strong as a few of its other category grades, this remains an acceptable rating for that area. When computing our nursing scores, we factor in both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. 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 avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care provided.