Copper Trace Family-first Senior Living

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality facility is that it received a very impressive short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care turned out to be its best category. In that category, we awarded this facility an A. Our short-term care scores are vital for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive profile, this nursing home also performed at a high level in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with an A. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. We scrutinized the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses were with patients, in computing our score in this area. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

The final area we analyzed is long-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's worst area. We awarded this facility a D in this category. Nevertheless, you should not judge this nursing home solely on one weak area, as it was awarded multiple superb grades in other areas. Nursing homes that don't fare well in this category typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We found that this nursing home vaccinated only 90.21739 percent of its patients, which is a bit of a concern. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This is its best feature in this category.