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.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This particular nursing home provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This facility's weakest category was short-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of D. Our short-term care scores are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.