Augusta Place, a Prospera Community

We also found that this facility excelled in long-term care. We gave them a grade of A+ in this area. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this facility a grade of A for inspections. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing score analyzes the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we scored ended up being this nursing home's poorest category. Nevertheless, even its weakest link would likely be a strength for many facilities. In fact, we awarded it a strong grade of B for our short-term care category. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 4.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.