Broad Acres and Country Terrace

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless government inspection reports in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of C. Nursing grades are primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a relatively low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this metric. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.

This nursing home's next most favorable area is short-term care. We awarded it a C in this category. This is basically a middle of the pack score in this area. In determining our short-term care grades, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This score is considered to be a solid assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The final datapoint we considered in this area is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Moving on to our final area, this facility didn't perform very well. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is this facility's weakest category grade. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is better than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.