Garden Terrace Healthcare Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Inspection grades are based on several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider 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 facility also was awarded a strong long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Our nursing grade considers many datapoints. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident at least once a day.

The next category we scored is short-term care, where this facility was given a grade of B-. This actually proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. This is nevertheless a middle of the pack score. Our short-term care grades are crucial for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.