Delmar Gardens of Gwinnett

One of the reasons this turned out to be a strong nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections is its best category grade. In that area, we gave it an A+. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.

This nursing home also was awarded an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this area. Facilities that do well in this category typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.5 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. The nursing category is based on a handful of datapoints, many of which are associated with nursing hours. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is not an impressive total. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared remarkably well in this statistic. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving residents more frequently.

Turning to our fourth area, this facility was awarded an acceptable short-term care grade of C. In determining these short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.