Four Seasons Retirement Center

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to be given several A+ category grades. Short-term care grades are vital for individuals requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in determining our grade in this category. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In our last area, this nursing home also received an excellent long-term care score, with a grade of A. This rounded out a straight A profile. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care ratings. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were not able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.