Glenwood Springs Healthcare

While we did not have many favorable things to say about this nursing home's overall grade, it earned a respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in this area with a B-. We would argue that one of the most important factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially focus on the severity of those deficiencies. We weren't able to find information on deficiency's for this nursing home. We would like to have more data for this facility. Without having the deficiency related data, it was challenging to assess the place in this category.

This facility's next best area ended up being short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a B-. In our short-term care rating, we attempt to create a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the facility's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. Nursing scores are primarily tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is far below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this metric. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a resident more often.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care, where this nursing home was given a rock bottom score in this area also. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this area, which is obviously somewhat alarming. Nursing homes that don't fare well in long-term care typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We weren't able to find information on vaccination rates. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.