Camellia Gardens of Life Care

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home also received an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a nursing home. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its elite assessments in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a score of A- for our short-term care rating. Short-term care ratings are meaningful for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations 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 they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The third area we looked at is long-term care. This facility was given an impressive long-term care score, with a grade of B+ in this category. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.08676 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next area we scored was nursing. This facility was awarded a favorable nursing score this year, with a grade of C. Even though this is not quite as good as several of its other grades, this is nevertheless a respectable score in that category. Our nursing rating is based on numerous factors. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This figure is far below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.