Aspirus Care & Rehab-Medford

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection grades are based on pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This nursing home also was dominant in the category of short-term care, where it received a score of A. Few facilities performed better in this area. Short-term care ratings are meaningful for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. We assessed the qualifications of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we rated was this facility's poorest area. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a respectable grade of C for our long-term care category. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.