Colorow Health Care

To go along with its strong overall grade, we gave this place an A for the area of inspections. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its profile, this nursing home also received a grade of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this area. In our short-term care assessment, we seek to forge a sound gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at a facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. We weren't able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Turning to an additional strength for this facility, we awarded them one of our more favorable scores in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final area we rated was nursing, where this facility was awarded a grade of C. Even though this turned out to be its worst category rating, this is still nothing to be ashamed of. Our nursing grade is based on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This place provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.