Aristacare at Meadow Springs

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid nursing homes with too many deficiencies flagged. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not 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 necessarily the end of the world.

Sadly, this facility's second most favorable score was long-term care. As it turns out, with a D in this area, it still performed somewhat poorly. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means the nursing home did not perform well in our quality measures relating to resident care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were somewhat surprised to discover that this facility vaccinated only 86.930695 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.06 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.

This facility ended up receiving rock bottom score in our nursing category. It received an F in this category. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This place fared well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next area we assessed is short-term care, in which this facility was given a rock bottom score in this category as well. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category, which is definitely very concerning. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 3.1 percent of its residents returning home.