Great Oaks Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not deem 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 nursing home received strong grades in the category of long-term care as well. Indeed, we awarded it one of our strongest scores in that category with a area of A-. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of C. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Nursing scores are primarily associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below the national average. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a resident even once per day.

The last area we rated is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a D for our short-term care category, rendering this its weakest category. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To have highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. In this facility's case, we found that it offers fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the average facility. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 3.9 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.