Eastland Health Care and Rehabilitation Center

While we were not very complementary of this nursing home's overall grade, it actually received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that category with an A-. Our inspection grades are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. You should especially avoid facilities with severe deficiencies linked to endangerment of patients. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

Turning to the category of short-term care, this nursing home received a grade of just D in that category. Sadly, this proved to be its second best grade. Our short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Given its grade in this category, we were not surprised to learn that this place was well below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Honestly, this was about what we expected to find. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

Sadly, this facility only earned a D for its long-term care score, which is not an impressive grade. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is higher than most nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place also keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.

The next area we assessed was nursing, which ended up being a weak spot for this nursing home. We gave this nursing home a D for the area of nursing. The nursing score analyzes many subcategories, but the paramount consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. 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. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. This nursing home fared well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these metrics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.