Dunklau Gardens

One of the reasons this place received a great overall grade is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing ended up being its best category. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A-. Our nursing score analyzes the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents at least once a day.

This facility also performed well in inspections. It received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best scores in that category with a score of B+. Few nursing homes with an overall grade in this range performed this well in multiple categories. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

In addition, this facility also was awarded favorable short-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded them one of our stronger scores in that category, with a grade of B+. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home'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 formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to our fourth category, this nursing home was given a decent long-term care grade of B-. Long-term care grades assess a facility's personal care rather than the skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. We were optimistic to learn that this facility vaccinated 98.859314 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.