Four Winds Manor

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of short-term care. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. There are a variety of subcategories within this area. Many of the criteria reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also received a nearly flawless inspection report. It earned one of our best grades in that category with a score of A-. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

The last area we rated was long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a solid score in that area, with a C. Although this wasn't as high as many of this facility's other scores, it is nevertheless not the end of the world. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. We were optimistic to discover that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.