Green Lea Senior Living

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

In addition, this nursing home also received favorable short-term care grades this year. In fact, we gave them one of our more favorable scores in that category, with a score of B+. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing grade is based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

The last category we analyzed ended up being this facility's weakest category. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it a decent grade of B- in long-term care. Long-term care grades are generally used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 75 percent of its residents. This is pretty significantly less than what we expected. Nevertheless, this place excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.