Episcopal Homes - The Gardens

To go along with a favorable overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for inspections. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its first-rate achievements in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for our long-term care rating. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 93.44978 percent of its residents. This is a few points lower than we anticipated but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Nursing scores are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients more frequently.

Moving on to our last category, this nursing home also performed admirably in our short-term care category. We gave it a B+ for that category. This completed a first-rate profile. In calculating our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is typically a useful measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.