Countryside Meadows

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

We also gave this facility a positive score in short-term care. This nursing home earned a B+ in this area, which happens to be one of our better grades. Short-term care grades are generally employed to measure a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. The nursing score is based on many datapoints. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, while this place got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of our quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this statistic.

The last category we rated was long-term care, proved to be this facility's worst area. We awarded this facility a D in that category. This really was one of just a couple of weak links on an otherwise impressive profile. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.