Fairview Healthcare Residence

Even though we were not high on this facility overall, we gave it a B- for short-term care. This grade is more respectable than the facility's overall grade. Our short-term care grades are considered to be more critical for residents in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home's long-term care score is one of its higher features. The nursing home was given a B- in this area. Our long-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's volume of nursing services. This includes a broad scope of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to learn that this facility vaccinated 99.22481 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. Nursing scores are mostly associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.

The final category we looked at is inspections. This ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. We gave it a score of D in this area. Since this information is compiled by government inspectors, we weight it heavily in our assessment. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. This facility had 3 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a risk to resident health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.