Mid-Del Skilled Nursing & Therapy

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its excellent health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an A. This is a much better grade than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't 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 shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home received high grades in the area of nursing as well. It received one of our highest scores in that category with a score of B-. Nursing ratings are primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The next area we analyzed was long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care grades. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our final category, we awarded this nursing home a D for the area of short-term care. This was the facility's least impressive category grade. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Considering its poor grade in this area, we were not surprised to find this nursing home provides significantly fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.