Country Meadows

To go along with a favorable overall score, we gave this nursing home an A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero 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 health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was awarded a high-end long-term care score. We gave them a strong grade of A- in this area. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 92.51101 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is slightly below what we anticipated but still a respectable percentage. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home was awarded an impressive short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a score of B+. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This category is typically a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The final metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final category we graded was nursing. In that area, we awarded this facility a solid grade of C. This actually is this facility's worst category. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours those nurses were with patients, in determining our rating in this area. This facility averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.