Dogwood Trails Manor

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. While this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this facility a score of A for our long-term care score. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. After we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. The nursing category is based on several subcategories, many of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we scored is short-term care. In this area, we gave this nursing home a solid grade of B-. This was this nursing home's weakest area. Short-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. It doesn't look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.