Colonial Gardens Nursing Home

Although we did not give this nursing home a good overall score, we gave it a strong score in the area of long-term care, where it received a B. This is better than many facilities in this area. This propped up an otherwise poor profile. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's next highest score is short-term care, but even there it earned a grade of just D in that area. This still happens to be a well below average score. In determining these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. With a score of this caliber in this area, we were not stunned to discover this place was well below average in several staffing areas we assess. It offered significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a grade of D for its nursing grade, which was actually one of its better category grades. Nursing ratings are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. 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. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on the last category of inspections, this facility fared very poorly. Sadly, it received an F in our inspection rating. This is our most heavily weighted category in our grading system. For facilities with bad inspection ratings, you should really focus on any severe deficiencies found on their recent inspection reports. This particular facility was assessed 5 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a risk to patient safety or health. Lastly, we also would like to point out that this nursing home received large government fines recently amounting to more than $100,000. This usually means that a facility's poor performance has been an issue for several years.