Big Meadows

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category. In that area, we gave it an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. This place received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among the reasons we rated this nursing home so favorably is that it was awarded a favorable long-term care grade. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second most favorable category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.65636 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. Our nursing score analyzes the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This facility provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat alarming figure as it is well below average. Finally, while this place got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of our quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this subcategory.

The last category we graded ended up being this facility's weakest area. However, even in its worst category we still gave it a decent grade of B- for short-term care. Our short-term care grades are vital for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. It does not look like this nursing home submitted information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.