Glendale Gardens Nursing & Rehab

One of the reasons this place is a strong nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections is its best category. In that area, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Among this facility's other accomplishments is its first-rate short-term care score. We awarded them one of our strongest scores in that area, with a grade of A. In calculating our short-term care scores, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is frequently a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing score includes a number of subcategories. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident at least once a day.

The final category we rated is long-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B-. This actually turned out to be this facility's least impressive area. This is nevertheless a middle of the pack score. Our long-term care grades are more meaningful for residents requiring more traditional services related to activities of daily living. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility gave the vaccine to just 60 percent of its patients. On a more positive note, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.