Garden Terrace Healthcare Center of Federal Way

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received a very impressive short-term care grade. Short-term care is its best category. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we size up a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is often a reliable assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. The nursing rating weighs several factors. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another area of strength for this nursing home is in inspections. In fact, inspections turned out to be one of its best categories. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B. Our inspection scores are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care. We awarded it a B- in that category. This is not a bad grade in this area. Long-term care scores are essential for prospective residents seeking non-healthcare services such as personal care. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. It does not appear that this facility provided information about vaccinations. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.