Chandler Nursing Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong facility is that it received an impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In this category, we gave it an A+. Our inspection ratings are based on many datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this nursing home a score of A+ for our long-term care grade. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.48718 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facilities next best area is short-term care. We awarded it a C in this category. This is essentially a middle of the pack score in this area. Our short-term care grades are likely most meaningful for individuals in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. It does not look like this facility submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last area we looked at is nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in that category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Nursing scores are mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it scored well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.