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.

An additional quality feature for this nursing home is that it was awarded a very positive long-term care score. In fact, this wound up being its second best category grade. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B+. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.6337 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. There are a variety of factors included in this area. Many of the criteria reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we rated is short-term care. This facility was given a very good short-term care grade in our assessment, with a B-. Although this is not nearly as dominant as many of its other category grades, this remains a decent grade for this category. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more important for those requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the number of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.