Arbour Health Care Center

While we did not rate this facility well overall, we want to point out its decent inspections in recent years. We awarded it a somewhat respectable grade of B- in that area. Our inspection ratings account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and 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. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

We also gave this facility a middle of the road grade in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. Our long-term care grade focuses on a facility's assistance with daily living instead of the skilled therapy and healthcare services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. One of the datapoints we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.63314 percent of its residents. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a D for its short-term care grade, which is not a score to write home about. In computing our short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. With its weak score in this category, we were not stunned to discover that this facility offers far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The final datapoint 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 just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics sunk this facility's short-term care grade.

The next category we assessed is nursing, which turned out to be a weak link for this nursing home. We awarded this facility a D in the area of nursing. In determining a facility's nursing score, we assess the amount of time nurses spend with patients and the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This place fared well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these data points to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.