Deerfield Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with a grade of A. This is a notably better grade than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. This place was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Additionally, we also wanted to point out that this facility was given strong long-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a B+. This turned out to be the nursing home's second best score. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 91.89189 percent of its residents. This is a bit lower than we expected but still a respectable percentage. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. Nursing grades are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, nursing grades also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The final category we graded is short-term care, which ended up being this facility's least impressive category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in this area. Naturally, this grade pulled down the nursing home's overall profile a bit. Our short-term care scores are vital for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.