Fenton Healthcare

Although we were not high on this place's overall performance, it actually received an impressive inspection report this year with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that area with a B+. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home received its next best category score in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of C in this area, which is a decent grade. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

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. Our nursing grade features a variety of factors. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat alarming figure as it is well below average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this nursing home got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients even once per day.

The last area we graded was long-term care, ended up being this facility's weakest area. We awarded this facility a D in this category. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.