StoneBridge Owensville

To pair with its decent overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A+ for our inspections rating. This grade is far better than its overall rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few 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 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. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of this facility's better category scores was in the area of short-term care. This proved to be its second most favorable category. In that category, we gave this facility a C. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final item we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

This facility received its third best category score in the category of long-term care. We awarded this facility a C in this category, which is a decent score. In our long-term care grade, we focus more on the sheer volume of services offered by a facility, along with a series of quality measures. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this facility vaccinated a relatively low 65.74394 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Moving on to our final area, we gave this facility a D for our nursing category. This was the facility's worst category rating. There are a host of factors included in this category. Many of these subcategories relate to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. On top of ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also had poor scores in the quality-based metrics we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This place was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in both of these statistics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this facility's nursing grade significantly.