Four Winds Nursing Facility

This facility earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless health inspection reports in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given a positive long-term care score. In fact, we gave it a grade of B+ in that category, which happens to be one of our more favorable scores. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a dangerous illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We gave this nursing home just a D for our short-term care grade. This is not a score to write home about. Our short-term care scores are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 5.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The last area we rated was nursing. We gave this nursing home a D in our nursing category, rendering this the nursing home's weakest area. There are a number of factors within this grade. Most of the subcategories reflect levels of nurse staffing. With a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, this facility's nurse staffing levels were well below average. Finally, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing scores. This facility was above average in two of the areas we focus on, with solid marks for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.