Dobson Plaza

To go along with its relatively modest overall grade, we awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall grade. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility was awarded its second best category score in the area of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. When calculating a facility's nursing score, we weigh the amount of time nurses commit to residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This nursing home performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this category, which is a bottom of the barrel score. This is certainly a major disappointment. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the data points we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccines. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.